Monkey See, Monkey Do
by Philippa
Summary: Richard Grayson: Boy Wonder, Super Sidekick. Or he would be, if Bruce Wayne would stop telling him to do his homework and let him start saving the world.
1. Evacuation

**A/N** I'm back! And I think that I will just barely make my self-imposed deadline! (As long as the site cooperates!) I hadn't realized how difficult it would be to get back in the swing of writing once I finished with school.

For those of you who are new, this story is a sequel to my other fics _The Nestling_ and _Toward a Dark Horizon_. You do not have to read them to enjoy this story. It is complete in and of itself. However, I would recommend that you at least take a look at _The Nestling_ (it's short, only six chapters) to give you an idea of my take on the characters.

**Disclaimer** This story was inspired by the movie, _Batman Begins_. I have no legal right to any part of the Batman franchise.

Chapter 1

**In Which Dick Refuses to Do As He Is Told**

_I learned the way a monkey learns — by watching its parents._

_- Charles, Prince of Wales_

The football sailed in a long, high arc through the soft summer evening air. Thirteen-year-old Dick Grayson ran backwards, leaped up, and triumphantly wrapped his hands around the pigskin. He smashed its pointed end into the ground and howled, "Touchdown!"

"There are no touchdowns in catch!" Bruce Wayne called from across the wide lawn. "Get your brain straightened out, Grayson!"

Ignoring the older man's jibe, Dick cocked his arm and threw. The ball spiraled smoothly up, and Bruce was forced to back up a few steps to catch it. He threw it back. The object was to throw the football a little farther each time until one of their arms gave out, and Bruce's record was unbroken. (The one time he had purposely shortened his throw, Dick had thrown a fit over being allowed to win and demanded a rematch.)

They played until the sun had sunk completely beneath the horizon and Alfred appeared to call them in to a late supper. "How's your homework?" Bruce asked as they dug into grilled steaks.

Dick rolled his eyes. "Fine."

"You haven't done it yet," his guardian surmised.

"I was busy today. I'll get it done."

"Will you?"

Dick rolled his eyes again. "When have I ever not done my homework?"

"How about last Tuesday?"

"Ok, fine, one time…"

"And the Thursday before that."

"Maybe twice. Come on, Bruce, I have a _tutor_. It's not like my grade is going to be docked if I miss a couple of deadlines."

"Mmm," Bruce muttered noncommittally. "Speaking of tutors, how are you getting along with Mr. Peaceable?"

After the disastrous incident with Miss Tracy, Bruce had hired a retired instructor named Paul Vincent. He had proven to be exactly what Dick needed, but after two years he had moved to Florida to be closer to his children. Since then, a progression of tutors had passed through the manor, all of them unsatisfactory in one way or another. Alex Peaceable, a part-time lecturer in the physics department at Gotham U, was the latest of these.

Dick shrugged. " 's alright," he mumbled around a mouthful of potato. "Kind of anal about some things."

"Like what?" Bruce asked, noting that Alfred was hovering close by, listening. Dick's education had become something of a bone of contention. Alfred thought the boy should be sent to school, but Dick had resisted the idea, and Bruce, remembering his own painful teenage years, didn't have the heart to force him.

"Poetry. He's always making me read poetry."

"And you read it," Bruce said, half as a statement, half as a question.

"Yes." Dick looked grumpy.

Alfred moved away, his expression mildly pleased. Bruce guessed that they were thinking the same thing - that perhaps they had finally found a tutor who was capable of the impossible task of making Richard Grayson learning what he didn't want to learn. He was far from incapable, and he wasn't lazy, but if he didn't see the importance of a thing, he simply refused to take any interest in it. Although he read voraciously, anything he touched by choice was science, or an occasional bit of history. He avoided any literature labeled "classic" and had a penchant for mathematical shortcuts that left him ignorant of methodology. Since he could think rings around most licensed educators, and since those scholars capable of keeping up with him preferred funded research to struggling with an adolescent genius, he had been more or less running his own education for the last three years. Until, possibly, Alex Peaceable. Only time would tell.

Later that evening, Bruce slipped into the TV room. A _Star Trek_ rerun was blaring on the large screen, and Dick was sitting cross legged on the couch, laptop balanced on his knees, and an open book beside him. His eyes, however, were focused on Captain Picard, not his open document. Bruce walked up behind him and read the three lines on the screen.

"_Out, Out-" is a poem by Robert Frost. In Frost's "Out, Out-," a guy gets his hand accidentally chopped off by a buzz-saw. When the guy gets his hand accidentally chopped off, there is a lot of blood. This is probably symbolic of_

Bruce picked up the remote and clicked off the television.

"Hey!" Dick protested. "It helps me think to have that on."

"Yeah. Right. Just do your homework, Grayson."

"Fine," Dick muttered, scrunching himself into the corner of the couch and scowling at the book of poetry.

Bruce rolled his eyes and headed for the door.

"Are you going out?" Dick called.

"Yes."

"Can I come with you?"

"No."

"Just thought I'd ask." Dick resumed staring at his screen, and Bruce ran down the stairs to the study. Alfred was waiting for him in the caverns.

"So do you think Peaceable will make it?" Bruce asked, beginning the familiar routine of donning his armor.

"I am feeling a certain cautious optimism," Alfred allowed.

"He's actually upstairs writing a paper on Robert Frost."

"Will wonders never cease," the butler murmured, passing over the gauntlets.

"I mean it's terrible," Bruce elaborated as he strapped them on, "but still…"

"It's very encouraging. How late will you be tonight, sir?"

"I'm not sure. There have been rumors that something big is supposed to go down in the east district tonight, but it's all been … elusive. Don't wait up for me," he added, as he did every night.

"Very well, sir," Alfred said, as _he_ did every night. They both knew that the butler would be waiting in his usual spot when the Tumbler rolled back into the cave.

The stern mouth beneath fearsome cowl twitched upward in the smallest of smiles. "Good night, Alfred."

"Good night, sir."

**

* * *

"Jimmy, if you do that one more time, I'm going to stuff you head first into the toilet!" Babs snarled, as her little brother leaped over her prostrate form with a small plane in his hand, his mouth emitting a steady stream of shrill engine noises and spit spray. Babs was sprawled on the living room floor with her math homework, and Jimmy had been circling her to come in for a landing for the last fifteen minutes.**

"I can't read minds, Barbara, I don't always know every little thing you're thinking!" their father's voice suddenly thundered from the kitchen.

Jimmy froze in mid squeal.

"Well maybe if you were actually home once in a while, you wouldn't need any psychic abilities!"

Babs's grip on her pencil tightened, and the graphite point snapped off against her notebook. Jimmy was suddenly at her side, burying his face against her shoulder. She sat up, pulling him onto her lap so that he could hide his face against her while she covered his ears.

The fight in the kitchen raged on, like all the others since they had moved to the new house after James Gordon's promotion to chief of police. Babs huddled over her little brother and wondered why she had ever thought things would be better if they left the old neighborhood.

The shouting went on and on until the ringing of the phone brought a shrill interruption. Babs heard her father pick up the phone and recognized the sudden urgency of his tone, even though the words were now indistinguishable. There was the sound of the phone clicking back into its cradle, and then her mother's low voice asking a question. Her father responded, and then…

"James Gordon, I am _not_ finished talking to you!"

"I have to go, the Deep Harbor Casino's being robbed!"

"You do not have to handle all the crimes in this city! Let someone else go! Isn't this what your wonder friend bat is for?" There was a short silence and then Barbara spoke in a bitterly cold tone her daughter had never heard before, not in all the months of fighting. "_Don't you dare walk out that door._"

Babs held her breath through an eternity that was deathly silent, until the soft click of the front door latching slipping into place.

* * *

Alfred was tending some of the orchids in the pool room when his phone began vibrating. He flipped it open and found a text message – a simple sequence of numbers that meant one thing. Evacuate.

Alfred froze, the phone in his hand. This had happened once before, when Bruce had feared he was trapped in a no-outs situation. It was imperative that Richard be gotten to safety before Bruce's cover was blown and all of Batman's enemies came after his other life. That time, an out had opened at the last minute, and Bruce had come home. Maybe the same thing would happen this time. Maybe.

Alfred abruptly came to life, snapping the phone shut and hurrying out of the pool room and upstairs. Dick was sound asleep, only his tousled hair visible above the covers. Alfred snapped on the overhead light and pulled back the blankets. "Wake up, Master Dick."

Dick groaned and forced open his eyes. "Did I oversleep again?"

"No. We're evacuating."

All traces of sleepiness disappeared and Dick popped up from his pillows, fully alert. "What happened? Where's Bruce?"

"He's ordered us to start evacuation procedures. Get dressed and then meet me in the study."

Confident that Dick was coherent and ready to spring into action, Alfred ran out of the room and down the stairs, dialing the airport to have one of the Wayne jets prepped immediately. They would fly to O'Hare, and then out of the country under false passports…

He was at the computer, programming the explosions that would seal off all entrances to the caverns, when Dick entered the study. He was dressed but empty handed.

"Where's your bag?" Alfred snapped, entering the code that would create a delayed crash of all of the Manor's systems.

"I'm not leaving."

At the boy's cold tone, Alfred froze, hands poised over the keyboard, and then he cursed himself for not having expected this, for not already having a line of persuasive arguments in place or, if those failed, a dose of chloroform. He turned, meeting Dick's steady gaze. "Of course you will. Those are Master Wayne's orders, and we will follow them."

"I'm not leaving him." Dick's tone wasn't upset or defiant. He was simply stating a fact. "Where is he, Alfred?"

"He didn't say. There is nothing we can do to help him." The butler turned back to the computer.

"You really expect me to believe there's no way you can find him?" When Alfred didn't respond, the boy continued, "I'm going after him if I have to walk into town, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

Alfred grimaced. Dick's words, which would be false bravado in the mouths of most thirteen-year-olds, had the unpleasant ring of truth. A super-intelligent kid on home territory and with five years worth of martial arts behind him would have no trouble eluding a man in his mid-sixties. And if he admitted it, he too was reluctant to fly to safety and leave Bruce to his fate, no matter how logical such a course might be.

The boy and the old man stared at each other for a long moment, and then Dick said softly, "You _know_ we can't go, Alfred."

The butler drew in a slow breath and walked over to the gilded bust which now hid the switch that would open the secret panel to the lift. _If I live through tonight, I'll be out of a job in the morning_.

"Well then, Master Dick," he said, as the shelves swung silently outward, "I suggest that we hurry."

_To Be Continued_

**A/N** Well, that didn't turn out quite like I had envisioned, but I think it will do. Leave a review and let me know what you think! Update will hopefully be up within a week.


	2. Visionaries and Pseudonyms

**A/N** Ack! I'm updating! I can't believe I'm updating! I'm so sorry about the abominable delay! I fell apart over Christmas break for a variety of reasons, but I'm sort of back on track now, and I'll be trying very hard to get back on a once a week update schedule. It didn't help that the scenario I had planned out for this chapter ended up not working at all, so I had to come up with something entirely new. I warn you in advance that this chapter is somewhat strange, and I'm not entirely sure where it came from. But I think it will work. I had to make a tiny edit to the first chapter, slightly altering the form of the message Bruce sends Alfred.

Thank you so much all of you who reviewed the first chapter! And thank you especially to Book Rose and Chigger who sent me extra notes of encouragement!

Chapter 2

**In Which Dick Exploits a Visionary and Goes by a Pseudonym**

_Blessed Saint Nicholas, we honour you for your acts of kindness, goodwill and charity to those on the margins of life._

_- Canon J. M. Rosenthal_

_It was just a normal night_, Batman thought bitterly, as he crouched motionless next to the glass topped counter, his eyes fixed on the four figures arranged in front of him in a hideous pantomime. _A routine patrol and a routine break-in_. It shouldn't have been a problem.

He had been making a circuit through one of Gotham's seediest business districts when he spotted furtive movement in the shadows under a busted streetlight. He crossed the rooftops in time to watch three masked men entering a small pawnshop. Batman made his own entrance through an open second story window – the hot spring night ensured that all the windows were open – and passed through a bedroom; apparently whoever owned the shop lived over it. A rapid sweep ensured the second floor was deserted, and he ran silently down the stairs just in time to catch the end of an ugly tableau. The three men in black ski masks and heavy leather coats (despite the weather) held knives; cowering in front of them were an old woman and a little girl.

The victims' backs were to him, but one of the burglars, at least, had a clear view of the staircase, and as the Bat came flying toward them, he crouched in preparation…

…just as the old woman thrust the child into the armed trio and ran for the door. The tallest of the men took two quick steps and caught her arm. He brutally bashed her head with the hilt of his knife, and she crumpled to the floor.

Batman moved fast, but for once, not fast enough. The girl had fallen against the legs of the crouching attacker, and before the Bat could reach them, the slender man had the tip of his knife embedded in her throat. "Don't move," he whispered, as a dark trickle seeped down her skin.

Silence reigned, both inside the shop and out on the street. All eyes were fixed on the Bat, while he pinned his own dark gaze on the hostage taker.

"Well boys, shall we make him take his mask off?" a cool, soft voice asked, and he realized that the hand with the knife belonged to a woman.

"I don't know if that's such a good idea. We don't want any trouble," the larger of the two men muttered.

"Trouble?" she asked mockingly.

"Any _more_ trouble," he amended. "Louis? What do you say?"

The other man, short and slender, rubbed the cloth over his head as if he were in pain, and turned away. "A mask behind which there is no face," he mumbled.

"Oh, he has a face. Just like you, Louis," she murmured, amusement rippling through her voice. "Wouldn't you like to know what it looks like?"

"Leave him alone," the other man snapped.

"As you wish. But what do you propose we do next?"

Even as she spoke, her gaze never wavered from the Bat's. Her companions were nervous, clumsy, unthreatening. She was poised, calm, and she moved fast. _As fast as I do,_ he thought grimly. He stood with his arms folded lightly across his chest, and now he dropped one hand to his belt.

"Please don't move," she requested, and the girl whimpered as the knife point dug a little deeper into her skin.

But he had already depressed the button that would send a small signal bouncing through the airwaves back to the Manor. He was almost certainly overreacting, but he'd never been caught quite like this before. And it had been more than two years since he had been challenged face to face.

The small man, Louis, was picking disconsolately through a basket of small items on a dusty table. He lifted something toward the dim light bulb. It was an icon, in a cheap gilt frame and a plastic cover. Suddenly he gasped and stiffened; his arm dropped and he tilted his head as though listening to a far away call.

"What do you propose…" the woman began to repeat.

"Shut up," the big man snapped and moved to hover over the little one.

At last Louis relaxed. He gently rotated his neck as if to relieve stiff muscles and gave a soft sigh.

"What did you see?" his friend demanded in a low, anxious voice.

"Glorious Saint Nicholas, from the kingdom of heavenly light."

"You saw _him_?" Will demanded, startled.

"Yes." Louis sounded quite calm, all traces of his earlier agitation gone.

"What did he say?"

"It's going to be all right. He promised to send us something. A sign. So we'll know what to do."

The woman began to laugh, a low, velvet sound that was nevertheless filled with hard-edged mockery. "Is this how you conduct all your business?"

"Shut up," the man who was not Louis replied. "If he says he saw it, then he saw it. We wait."

* * *

Batman was growing worried. He had been in his present position for an hour now, but the woman across from him had never wavered, never taken her gaze from him or so much as wavered her knife against the child's throat. The girl herself was perfectly silent, her only motion the ceaseless flickering of her dark eyes. They moved in random patterns without ever slowing to focus, and he guessed that she was blind.

"Look, if you would just tell me what it is you saw…"

"I told you already!" Louis shot back. The two had held a series of terse conversations, revealing that they were brothers, that the older one's name was Will, and that Will's doubt lay not in whether his brother had been given a vision, but in whether or not that vision was being interpreted correctly.

"Tell me again."

"I _saw_ him."

"What did he look like?"

"I don't know. I can't describe it," Louis said desperately.

"Then how do you know it was him?" Will asked pointedly.

"No!" burst out Louis. "He knew me! He…he said he would send us help."

"Before you said he was sending a sign," the woman put in, a hint of malice in her smooth voice.

"A sign to help!" Louis' voice was approaching hysteria again.

"You stay out of this," Will snarled, sublimating his own unease in order to defend his brother.

_She's getting restless. They're all getting restless. Something will have to give soon_.

Will was pacing back and forth like a caged coyote when the soft knock sounded at the front door. Louis leaped to his feet from where he had been sitting with his back against the table of saints. "It's come!"

"Wait!" Will grabbed his arm. "How do you know?"

"Because I know," Louis said gently and freed himself to go and open the door.

It was dark in the street, and there was little light in the shop to illuminate the figure. All Batman could see was that it was short and slight and wore a hood.

"Hello, Louis," a cheerful, rather high voice greeted. "Sorry you had to wait so long."

_No. Oh no, no, no._ He knew that voice.

* * *

_Twenty minutes earlier…_

Dick very carefully crept away from the store front, waiting until he was well away from the windows before he stood up and darted toward the alley entrance where Alfred was parked.

"You're not going to believe this," he gasped as he threw himself into his seat.

"I heard most of it," Alfred said, turning the screen so that he could see the display broadcast by the tiny robotic camera Dick had pushed beneath the crack of the front door.

"Santa Claus?" Dick demanded, squinting at the dark display.

"Saint Nicholas. Claimed by some thieves as a patron, although the theology of the premise is somewhat in question." He altered the angle of the camera and said, "There's our problem."

Dick looked at the hostage and her captor and demanded, "That's it? I mean, he's been in there for an hour. Why hasn't he done anything?"

"There must be something else. Something we're not seeing." But continued searching turned up nothing. "All right," Alfred said at last, "if they're waiting for a sign, we're going to give them one."

"But…what if they have a … bomb or something, and we screw things up? I mean these guys are a little…" Dick tapped his temple significantly.

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. Would you rather obey orders and go?"

Dick grimaced and shrugged. "So what are we going to do?"

Five minutes later, he was knocking on the door of the shop, with a black ski mask over his face and the hood of his green sweatshirt pulled firmly over that. He heard a brief argument about opening the door, and then it was swung open by a man not much bigger than Dick and who wore a mask identical to his. "Hi Louis. Sorry you had to wait so long." Dick struggled to keep his voice light and cheerful and ignore his heart that was pounding like a jackhammer.

"It wasn't so long," Louis said gently.

Taken aback by the man's matter-of-fact manner, Dick shoved a packet of bills toward him. "I'm supposed to give you this."

Louis took it reverently. "Thank you."

The other man appeared and stared down over his brother's shoulder at the money. "Where did it come from?" he asked suspiciously.

"From someone who didn't need it as much as you do. If you know what I mean…"

Will suddenly guffawed. "Thanks, Robin Hood."

"You're welcome. You can go now, and don't worry about … him. He'll be taken care of."

"Just like that?" Will asked uncertainly.

"Yeah," Dick said easily. _Believe me, please believe me._ "Just like that."

"Was there…any other message?" Louis asked wistfully.

"Uh…" Dick's mind scrambled. He'd already gone through all the dialogue Alfred had given him. "Get to bed. You've had a rough night. And next time … do your homework."

Louis laughed. "That sounds like him."

Will grabbed his brother's shoulder and hauled him out the door. "Let's go!" he tossed at the back of their companion.

She remained motionless and then, faster than Dick could exhale, she brushed past him in the doorway, and disappeared into the shadows.

Batman had sprung forward and caught the girl just before she hit the ground. Now he, too, ran for the door, caught Dick's arm in an ungentle grasp and hauled him along. They came face to face with Alfred, who was still standing in the same spot he had occupied during the entire exchange where he could cover both the door and the shop window with his sniper rifle.

Batman stopped and flung him a key. "Two blocks south," he gritted, then renewed his grip on Dick and resumed running. How his guardian knew where the Tumbler was parked, Dick didn't know, but before he could even think the question, he found himself thrust into a seat with the little girl on his lap. As the engine sprang to life and they shot down the street, she stirred, and he saw that a wide gash on her throat bled freely. The sight of her blood unleashed a strange sick feeling inside of him, and he wanted to push hard against the slash and stop her blood from pouring out and out, but he could only hold her helplessly. They swung sharply around a curve and the girl gasped softly.

"It's ok," Dick said, as much to reassure himself as her. "We look scary, but we won't hurt you."

"I can't see you," she said softly, "but I'm not afraid."

"Oh," he said awkwardly. "What's your name?"

"Ariadne." One tiny hand fluttered up, and she gently felt the rough cotton of his mask. "What's yours?"

"Uh … Robin," he said before he thought. "Hood," he added hastily, remembering the remark thrown at him by the thief.

A little smile pulled up the corners of her mouth, but she said nothing more. The Tumbler stopped, and Dick could see the lights of Gotham General Hospital gleaming out his window. Wordlessly, Batman lifted the girl and ran toward the doors to the ER. Less than a minute later he was back, his burden gone, and they sped away.

The drive back home was made in complete silence. They shot through the waterfall and came to a bone-jarring halt in the cool darkness of the caverns. Beside him, Dick heard Bruce climb out of the car, and then the caves flooded with light.

"So … that was really weird," Dick offered cautiously, opening his door.

Bruce ignored him, pulling off his cowl and tossing it on a counter. "Strip down to your underwear," he ordered, not looking at Dick as he began unstrapping his gauntlets.

Dick obeyed, pulling off his green hoody and then struggling out of the Kevlar vest Alfred had made him put on. He dropped everything in a pile on top of his sneakers and shivered in the cool air. Bruce tossed him a towel, still not looking at him, and walked over to the elevator. "Go upstairs," he ordered as he opened the grille. "Take a shower and go to bed."

"But…" Dick's protest died in his throat as his guardian finally turned and faced him. Bruce's face was a chill mask, so expressionless it might have been carved. But the boy recognized it for what it was – the thin covering of a consuming rage that burned with icy intensity, barely held in check. Without another word, he walked into the cage and sent himself upward.

_To Be Continued_

**A/N** I try not to grovel for reviews too often, but I'm giving into the temptation this time: Pleeeease, pleeeeease, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease tell me what you think!


	3. Decision

**A/N** Woohoo! I am updating on time! I rock. Thanks so much to all of you who reviewed the last chapter. It was very encouraging and helped me write faster!

And in other news, my paper on fan fiction has been accepted to the annual conference for Computers and Writing! Next May, yours truly will be in Detroit reading to a bunch of academics about author's notes and reviews! Crazy little world, isn't it?

Chapter 3

**In Which Bruce Comes to a Decision**

_The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers, you know._

_- __The Curse of Chalion_

Dick took a shower, but he did not go to bed. Instead, he paced restlessly across the length of his room, the night's events running constantly through his head like a track on replay. On the one hand, he was elated. He and Alfred had gotten Bruce out, they weren't halfway to Switzerland, and everything was fine. On the other hand, the look Bruce had given him in the Batcave sent a leaden snake of dread writhing through his stomach. If he had thought about his guardian's reaction at all, he had assumed that if the outcome were happy, Bruce would be relieved and understanding. If it wasn't happy, then it didn't really matter.

Obviously, his assumption had been dead wrong. He had seen Bruce in the throes of frustration and extreme irritation, but not angry. Not like this.

At last, feeling like his head was about to burst, he sat down at his desk. _I may as well get some work done. There's no way I can go to sleep._ His essay on Frost was still exactly three and a half sentences long. _I hate poetry. _He pulled his book toward him and once again read over the lines.

…_The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,  
As he swung toward them holding up the hand  
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep  
The life from spilling._

Dick closed his eyes and saw the life spilling from Ariadne's throat. _I really hate poetry._

* * *

Alfred drove through the secluded gate in the wall surrounding the Manor's property. Once he was well inside the perimeter, he braked and sat for a moment with his eyes closed. He wasn't exactly sure what waited for him inside the caverns, but he was certain it wouldn't be good. Bruce would blame him for the night's events, as, Alfred told himself bitterly, he deserved. He, after all, had been the one who had tracked Batman down, driven the Tumbler, and come up with a plan to interrupt the situation. But on the other hand, the crisis with Dick had been inevitable – precipitated by the night's events, perhaps, but inevitable. Alfred drew a deep breath and shifted the car out of park. It was time Bruce Wayne faced the facts about his young ward.

This particular car wasn't kept in the caverns, but in a stable ostensibly built for polo ponies and never used. Alfred stowed it and walked up to the house where let himself in by a side door and made his way to the study, the elevator, and the caverns.

Bruce was standing next to a large, touch-sensitive screen that displayed an interactive map of Gotham. He was apparently intent on zooming in and out on the streets where tonight's incident had taken place and didn't look up as Alfred approached, even though the butler's shoes clicked distinctly on the stone floor. Alfred held his hands still at his sides and waited patiently.

At last, Bruce spoke, and the fury that crackled in his voice belied his casual stance. "What the hell were you thinking, Alfred?"

Alfred's eyes closed in pain. Even though he had been expecting something like this, the shock of it still ripped across his nerves like a blowtorch.

"I received the message to evacuate," the old man began, "and I immediately went and woke Master Dick. I made certain he understood what was happening and told him to get dressed, then went downstairs to begin … everything else. But when he came down, he told me that he wasn't leaving."

"Ah, I see," Bruce said softly. "A thirteen-year-old child _tells_ you that he doesn't feel like adhering to evacuation procedures, and you comply with him."

"To be precise, _sir_, he told me has wasn't going to leave _you_."

"That was no reason to lead him into extreme danger." Bruce spat out and started to turn, then hesitated and jerked himself back around.

_He won't look at me because he's afraid of what he might do_, Alfred thought, and a jolt of fear shot through him. He wasn't frightened for himself but for the man across from him. _He can't afford to carry around any more guilt._

"I could not have forced him to obey my orders," Alfred said carefully.

"Oh no?" Bruce sneered. "You were rendered helpless by a boy?"

"You know better than me what he's capable of. He wouldn't have wanted to hurt me, but he was determined to come after you, and if I had gotten in the way he would have done whatever he deemed necessary."

Bruce slammed his hand against the screen and spun, his eyes blazing. "You could have tricked him, drugged him, knocked him over the head – instead you drag him into the most dangerous part of town to take on three armed criminals while you stand over his shoulder with a _gun_?! _There is no excuse for that, Alfred_!"

Alfred's shoulders drooped in relief as he let the burning tirade wash over him. This manifestation of fury he could handle. The danger was when the anger seethed bottled up, liable to explode in any direction, to drive any course of action.

"He could have been killed! You could have been killed! That little girl nearly was! When I give orders I expect them to be obeyed, and I have more than half a mind to ask for your resignation."

Alfred decided it was time to respond with a little fire of his own. "All right, so tonight I could have knocked him out and dragged him onto a plane. What about tomorrow and the day after that? Should I have kept him locked in a closet for the next ten years? Because the moment he had a chance, he would come looking for you, and he knows just enough to get him into a whole lot of trouble. If you'd think for half a minute, you'd know that."

Bruce stared at him, then collapsed against the wall, his fight gone like the air out of a popped balloon. He lifted a hand and wearily rubbed his eyes as he confessed, "I've never been so scared in my life as when I heard his voice at that door."

Alfred pulled over a chair and sank into it gratefully. "Believe me, Master Wayne, I can fully appreciate that. But nothing happened. He's fine. We're all fine."

"You're right." Bruce took a deep shuddering breath and looked at his butler. "And this will never happen again. I'll talk to Dick."

"It's not going to be that easy."

The billionaire scowled. "What do you mean?"

"That boy has one plan, and that's to join you on the streets as soon as he possibly can. Everything he's done for the past five years has been toward that goal."

Bruce looked stunned. "What are you talking about?"

"He throws himself into his sessions with you and practices obsessively on his own. His interests in science and math are guided toward branches with practical, mechanical applications – you don't think he's just building model airplanes in that workshop you set up for him?"

"He's never said…"

"Of course not, because he knows you'll tell him no if he brings it up. He's waiting until he can prove to you that he's ready, but believe me, sir, he's not joking when he asks if he can go out with you every night."

"He's just a kid," Bruce protested, his look pleading.

"Forgive me, Master Wayne, but he has never been _just_ a kid."

Bruce sighed heavily and abruptly sat down on the edge of a desk. "No. He hasn't, has he?"

"He knows what he wants."

"No. He doesn't. He may think that he knows, but he has no idea."

"That may be true, but you're going to have an extraordinarily difficult time convincing him of that."

Bruce shook his head. "This is no kind of a life, Alfred. He's going to have something better. A lot better."

Alfred remained silent, his hands lightly clasped about his knees. He was remembering a night, five years ago, after Batman had destroyed the League of Shadows' most important remaining agent in the city. Bruce had spoken then of the end, of a life without the mask. The subsequent years, however, had revealed that Gotham didn't need the League to produce plenty of evil. The city did just fine on its own, and anything resembling an end was nowhere in sight.

At last Bruce sighed. "You're absolutely convinced of this – that what he wants is to become … another Batman."

"Yes, sir."

"All right then." Bruce straightened up and walked over to the elevator. "I need a shower."

Alfred refused to have his attention diverted. "What do you intend to do?"

Bruce looked back grimly. "I'm going to teach him just exactly what it is that he's asking for. Then we'll see."

* * *

Dick typed in the last period and hit the "save" icon. _There. One page. Exactly._ He shut the lid of his laptop and flopped down on his bed, glanced over at his clock. It was only 2:30, but he felt like an eternity had passed since he had gone to bed for the first time that night. _I wish he would just come in here and get it over with. Anything would be better than not knowing_.

As if in answer to his thoughts, a soft knock sounded. Dick jumped off the bed, then forced himself to take a deep breath and steady his shaking hands before opening the door. Bruce stood there, looking down at him. He wasn't smiling, but the icy wrath Dick had glimpsed in the caverns had disappeared.

"I saw your light," the older man said quietly.

"Yeah, I couldn't sleep."

"May I come in?"

Dick stepped back and Bruce walked in, treading as softly as a cat. He grabbed the desk chair and swung it around, straddling it and folding his arms over the back. Dick stood stiffly before him, feeling like guilty defendant before the judge.

It was better to know at once. He _had_ to know. "Are you going to send me away?"

Bruce looked genuinely startled as he stared up, frowning, into Dick's face. "This is your home, I'm not going to send you away." He added quietly, "I would never send you away."

Dick's knees went weak with relief, and he collapsed onto the edge of the bed. He could deal with anything, except for that. He suddenly realized that Bruce was looking at him expectantly, and he vaguely realized that his guardian had asked a question. "I'm sorry, what?"

"What do you want to do when you grow up?"

Dick didn't figure there was much point in keeping quiet about it any longer. "I want to fight crime."

"Like a cop? A lawyer?"

"No. Like you."

Bruce was staring at him intently, as if he were trying to see past Dick's skin into his brain. "Why?"

"Because…" There were a million reasons why, Dick thought, but he didn't know how to explain all of them. Actually, he wasn't sure he could explain any of them. "Because it works," he finally said.

Bruce's eyes narrowed. "There are lots of other options that work."

"Not as well."

"Doing what I do – it takes years of practice, of pain, of sacrifice. If you do this, you have to be willing to sacrifice everything else to it. Do you understand?"

Dick's heart began to beat very fast. He took deep breath and said as firmly as he could, "Yes." To his supreme embarrassment, his voice cracked on the single word, and his 's' was lost in a squeak.

Bruce's eyes widened, but he didn't laugh or even smile. "Then be in the gym at five. You need to start training harder."

Dick's jaw dropped. "You mean it?"

"Would I say it if I didn't?" Bruce stood up and shoved the chair back into place. "Don't be late."

"No. I'll be there! I'll definitely be there, right at five o'clock this afternoon!"

Bruce's eyebrows flicked upward. "Five _a.m._, kid." He glanced at his watch. "Try to grab an hour of sleep first." He frowned suddenly. "Provided of course, that your homework is done."

Dick couldn't resist a small smirk. "It's done."

Bruce nodded and started to leave. "Oh, Richard?"

Dick looked at him cautiously. Being called Richard by Bruce was always a bad sign. "Yeah?"

"You do realize that you're in serious trouble for disobeying Alfred?"

"Oh. Yeah, I figured."

"No TV, no movies, no video games. For two months." He shut the bedroom door behind him.

"Yes, yes, _yes_!" Dick's fist punched the air as he hopped exuberantly about the room. "Did that just happen? I can't believe that just happened!" At last he crawled onto his bed and set his alarm for 4:45, just in case he did happen to fall asleep, although he was positive he wouldn't. But he had been told to grab an hour's worth of rest, and this was one set of orders he intended to obey to the last letter.

_To Be Continued_


	4. Training

**A/N** Thanks, as always to all reviewers! You are the reason I am writing this story.

Chapter 4

**In Which Dick Begins His Training and Impresses His Tutor**

_My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,  
And every tongue brings in a several tale,  
And every tale condemns me for a villain._

_- __Richard III_

Bruce sat cross legged on the mats in the middle of the dark gym, trying to center himself, to calm his mind for the coming ordeal. He forced his breathing to stay shallow and his taut shoulders to relax, while willing the knot in his stomach to dissolve. He would need every shred of control and judgment for what he was about to do.

When Dick bounded into the gym just before five, the lights were on and Bruce was standing with his back to the door, absently flexing his hands. He heard his ward come to a stop behind him.

"There are two things I want to make sure you understand before we begin," Bruce said quietly. "One is that if your schoolwork begins to slip, this will stop. Immediately. The other is, if you ever want to quit, for any reason, you can do so. That decision is completely your own. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Good."

"But I'm not going to…"

Bruce spun around and hit him, a vicious blow to the stomach that knocked Dick flat on his back. "Get up," Bruce said coldly.

Dick began to scramble to his feet. "Whoa, I wasn't read…" A hard kick sent him flying halfway across the mats.

"Death does not wait for you to be ready," Bruce said grimly, as he crossed to the boy's side, picked him up in a cruel grip, and threw him.

Dick's brain finally caught up with his hurling body, and he twisted in midair, landing in a crouch and ready to block the fist that came crashing toward his head. He managed to ward off the blow, but the next second his feet were swept out from under him and he was again flat on his back.

Bruce forced him up in a brutal arm lock. "If you lose your head or your feet, you're finished. Never let an enemy get a clear shot at either. Try that again."

He threw Dick back into his former crouched position, and this time when the boy blocked the punch, he also jumped sideways, buying himself three seconds before a kick caught the back of his knee.

It went on like that for the next thirty minutes, Bruce knocking Dick down again and again until his breath came only in pained gasps and he was swaying during the few seconds he kept to his feet.

_Just one more time_, Bruce told himself as Dick slowly pulled himself up from the mats after taking a kick in the ribs. One more and he wouldn't be able to get up again. One more time to drive the lesson home.

Dick straightened his shoulders, and met Bruce's gaze, as ready as he could be for whatever was coming next. _He might not be able to get up again, but he would try anyway._ He couldn't do it. Abruptly, the older man turned away and walked over to the cupboard where clean towels were always kept. "This afternoon," he said conversationally as he pulled the top one off the stack, "instead of coming here for our usual session, you'll go to the country club for your first polo lesson." Draping the towel around his neck, he walked toward the door.

"Polo?" Dick called after him.

Bruce looked back over his shoulder, careful to keep his expression blank, his tone cool. "It explains the bruises." He walked briskly out of the door and up the stairs to his bathroom where he started to strip off his shirt for the shower, then fell to his knees and retched into the toilet. When the heaves subsided, he sat back and rested his head against the cool tile of the wall. His hands were shaking uncontrollably, and his teeth were chattering. He had known that it would be bad, but he hadn't realized that every blow he dealt would be like twisting a knife in his own gut. And he would have to do it all over again, tomorrow.

* * *

Alfred had watched the entire training session through the lenses of the Manor's security cameras. The moment Bruce left the gym, he bolted out of his chair and headed down the hall. Dick had made it to the doorway and was leaning against the frame, his eyes closed.

"Master Dick?" Alfred asked softly as he approached.

The pale blue eyes flickered open, and a weak smile appeared. "Hey, Alfred." He tried to take a step forward and staggered.

Alfred leaped forward and wrapped his arm around the boy's shoulders. "You should soak in the Jacuzzi to keep from stiffening up."

"It went a little rougher than I expected," Dick mumbled, and allowed himself to be led out of the gym and down to the pool room. Alfred stuck him in the hot water with the jets going and busied himself with the plants, keeping a wary eye on the head bobbing above the foam. He wasn't sure whether or not weariness would be enough to overcome the pain and lull Dick to sleep, but he wasn't taking any chances.

When he judged it wasn't safe for the young master to remain any longer in the heat, he appropriated a towel and walked back to the edge. "Time to get out, Master Dick."

Dick stood up obediently, and as the foam ran off his slender body, the beginning of dark bruises were visible across his stomach and rib cage. Alfred winced, but made no comment as he handed over the towel.

"Alfred, I've been thinking about last night," Dick began as he wiped off his arms and chest and wrapped the towel around his waist.

"Yes?"

"Well, about that thief who said he had the vision. I mean, he was crazy, right?"

"Many people are fervently religious without being insane."

"But this wasn't religious," Dick argued as they walked toward the door. "This was…nuts. I mean, a saint appears to him in the middle of a robbery? But…" He hesitated, frowning. "I can't help thinking that his vision came true."

"How so, Master Dick?" Alfred pushed open the doors and Dick shivered as they left the moist air of the conservatory.

"He said Saint Nicholas told him that everything would be all right. And they got away. With a lot of money. Don't you think that's a little…weird?"

Not really in the mood to go into the fine points of theology, the butler evaded, "There are many unheard of coincidences in the world."

"But do you ever think that things were like…meant to happen?" Dick persisted.

_I used to believe you were meant for this house._ Alfred's eyes found yet another bruise darkening across the boy's back. "I believe we choose our own actions. If you shower quickly, you'll have time for some sleep before Mr. Peaceable comes."

Dick took the stairs at a pace much slower than his usual scamper, and Alfred's mouth was tight as he watched the boy go. _You had better know what you are doing, Bruce Wayne._

* * *

Alex Peaceable was a slender African American man of twenty-seven. He had been on the fast track for a tenured mathematics professorship before a brush with meningitis severely disrupted his schedule. When he recovered, he found that he had lost his taste for the cutthroat competition of academic life, although not for knowledge. He knew Lucius Fox through the engineering department at Gotham U, and when the older man suggested he try private tutoring, Alex had been dubious. He had never worked with children, but Fox assured him that Richard Grayson was not an average child and that he was desperately in need of a tutor who could write algorithms faster than he could.

To Alex's surprise, he fell in love with his new job. He liked Dick – the kid was brilliant and amazingly unspoiled, despite his untraditional lifestyle with his wealthy, indulgent, and notorious guardian. Alex detested Bruce Wayne as much as he liked Dick Grayson, but his sentiments only spurred him on to do his best for the kid. And Wayne, to his credit, interfered very little with Alex's curriculum, merely requesting that periodic progress reports be placed on his desk. Alex strongly suspected that said reports were rescued from unread obscurity by Alfred Pennyworth, but the arrangement worked.

When Alex arrived at Wayne Manor that day, Dick was already in the schoolroom, leafing through a highly speculative book on dark matter. His page on Robert Frost was resting in the middle of Alex's desk.

"You survived," Alex said dryly, picking up the sheet and scanning the first line. It didn't look particularly promising, but considering that this was the first time the boy had produced more than two sentences about literature without over-the-shoulder supervision, he wasn't going to be too exacting.

Dick started to shrug, froze, and carefully relaxed his shoulders. "It wasn't so bad. The writing, I mean. I didn't like the poem."

"Surprise, surprise," Alex murmured, but his mind was distracted. Dick was usually bouncing with energy first thing in the morning, but today he looked pale and tired. He was also wearing a sweatshirt – the first time Alex had seen him in long sleeves since the beginning of March. "Are you feeling all right?"

Dick looked surprised. "I'm fine."

"You look a little tired."

"I didn't sleep very well last night," the boy admitted, then added innocently, "I think Robert Frost gave me nightmares."

"Or it might have been the late night horror show you watched while writing this," Alex observed shrewdly.

Dick just grinned, the expression relieving some of the pallor of his face.

Alex picked up a biology textbook and tossed it onto his pupil's desk. "Get started on chapter 11 while I read this and see what kind of b.s. you came up with this time."

Dick obediently flipped open the book, and Alex settled at his own desk with the essay.

_"Out, Out-" is a poem by Robert Frost. In Frost's "Out, Out-," a guy gets his hand accidentally chopped off by a buzz-saw. When the guy gets his hand accidentally chopped off, there is a lot of blood. This is probably symbolic of the guy's life because if you lose too much blood then you die. I think that this is a terrible poem because it talks about things that are sad and depressing. If you are going to read a poem, and I don't know why you ever would, but if you were going to for some reason, I think it should help you think about good things and things that help you see the bright side of life. If you want to know about depressing stuff, you can just walk down the back streets of Gotham and see it in real life. You don't have to read some poem.  
There were two parts that I especially hated in this poem. The first was when it talked about the saw eating the boy's hand like the boy was supposed to go and eat supper. It seems like Robert Frost was trying to be funny, but somebody getting hurt and bleeding and dying isn't funny at all, and I think it's really disrespectful to make a joke about something like that. If you're going to write a poem about something sad, you should at least keep it serious. The other part that I really hated was that the boy's sister saw him get hurt so bad and saw his blood running out all over. She probably loved him a lot, and it probably made her really scared to see that happen. Now she will probably have nightmares for the rest of her life where she will see her brother getting his hand chopped off._

The last third of the page was devoted to a speculation on how lazy Robert Frost probably was since he didn't even _try_ to make his poem rhyme.

Alex Peaceable sat back in his chair and stared in amazement at the back of Dick's head. He had been trying for months to get the boy to express feelings about something besides mechanical engineering, but he had not expected this sudden flow of passion, particularly in light of the cheerful disdain with which Dick always treated any mention of poetry.

Dick glanced up from his book. "How badly did I do this time?" he asked when he saw his tutor looking at him.

Alex shook his head. "It's good. The best thing you've ever written. It appears you actually felt something when you read that poem."

"Yeah. Hatred."

"Not all poems are supposed to make you feel good. They're supposed to make you think."

"About how sometimes people die and you can't do anything to stop it? Yeah, I want to spend a lot of time thinking about that."

There was an angry edge of sarcasm to Dick's tone that Alex had never heard before. "Are you done with the chapter?" he asked, wanting to think a little more before he continued the poetry discussion.

"Four more pages."

Dick turned back to his book, and Alex reread the first part of the essay. He stopped when he got to the speculation on the sister's nightmares. _What do you see in your nightmares, Richard Grayson?_ he wondered as he remembered the brief sketch of the boy's history he had been given. No known relatives, mother killed the night Dr. Crane's fear toxin destroyed the Narrows, rescued from a severely abusive foster home. Maybe the sudden burst of feeling wasn't so surprising after all. No matter how much math and science you buried it under, you couldn't get rid of the past.

* * *

Gordon parked in his driveway and glanced at his watch. He should be just in time for breakfast.

Last night, the Deep Harbor casino had been robbed of sixty-five million dollars. The police were, to put it in Sherlock Holmes parlance, baffled. They had no leads and no good guesses. The robbery was over and done with before S.W.A.T. had even gotten the call - the vault door had been mysteriously and noiselessly blown open and the currency that had been stored inside was gone.

It was the biggest robbery in the history of Gotham, and Gordon, feeling that time was essential and that he now led a team of officers he could trust, left the c.s.i. to his lieutenant and went to light up the bat signal. The highly public device made him uncomfortable, and he only used it in dire emergencies, when he couldn't get an answer on the number that, as far as he knew, only two people in the world had memorized. He had sat beside the altered spotlight for two and a half hours before he realized that, for the first time their five-year relationship, the Bat wasn't going to respond. Now, in addition to frustration over the robbery and the ever-gnawing worry about the fights with Barbara, he was beset with a deep conviction that somehow, somewhere, catastrophe was looming.

"Dad!" Jimmy squealed as Gordon unlocked the kitchen door and stepped into the warm scents of bacon and pancakes. The little boy jumped up and ran over to give his father a sticky hug.

Gordon swung his son into the air, then set him down with an "Oof! When did you get so big?"

"Did you catch the bad guys, Dad?"

Gordon sighed. "Not yet." He glanced at Barbara's back, which had been pointedly turned to him ever since he had come in. "The casino lost 65 million dollars last night."

"We saw the paper," Babs chimed in from her spot at the table.

"Yeah, well, I'd better go change my shirt." With a last look at his wife's stubborn back, Gordon headed for the bedroom. He changed his shirt and shaved, and ran into Babs in the hall on his way back to the kitchen.

"Have you seen the paper?" she asked softly.

"About the robbery?"

"No. About Batman."

His eyes widened, and he grabbed the folded newssheet she offered. The article was at the bottom of page two, and the headline read, _**Batman and His Merry Men?**_

_Last night, at 12:35 a.m., the Batman rushed into Gotham Hospital's ER with a wounded child in his arms and, after delivering her to waiting paramedics, disappeared in classic style. The girl, Ariadne Pappas, 12, had received a shallow knife cut across the throat. Her condition is not critical, doctors say. Her mother, Athena Pappas, 39, said that her daughter had been spending the night with an aunt who owns a small pawn shop in Gotham's south quarter._

"_Three robbers broke into the shop, but the Batman came and saved them. Ariadne said he had someone else with him, who held her on the way to the hospital. He said his name was Robin Hood," Pappas said._

_Ariadne Pappas, who is blind, was unable to provide a description of Batman's alleged companion._

"You didn't know about this," Babs guessed, watching his face as he read.

Gordon looked up at her seriously. "Go finish your breakfast, honey. Thanks for the paper."

Resigned to the fact that her father refused to talk to her about the Bat, Babs retreated to the kitchen.

Gordon remained in the hallway, staring at the article. _Is this the reason he didn't show last night? And has he actually got a partner? No. Impossible. The girl was confused. She'd just had her throat slashed, for Pete's sake._

"Your pancakes are getting cold."

Gordon looked up and saw his wife standing in the kitchen doorway. She wasn't glaring and she looked tired.

"Thanks," he said softly.

She nodded silently and retreated. With a final glance at the paper, Gordon tossed it on the hall table and followed her.

_To Be Continued_

**A/N** I realized, while writing the first part of this chapter, what a dark story this is going to be. I mean, Batman isn't called the Dark Knight just because he wears black, but still, enough is enough. So if you're feeling unduly depressed, I promise some comic relief next chapter. We'll get a closer look at the visionary thieves, and the appearance of Robin will unleash a strange chain of events in Gotham City.

In response to a question by a reviewer, Barbara is fifteen, just starting her sophomore year of high school. Her birthday is in late November, and Dick's is in February, so there's a little over two years between them.

There's a new challenge up in the Batman Martial Arts forum. It has to do with writing a fight scene, so this is a great chance to get in some practice, especially for those of you who are always whining about how hard action is to write. (Yes, yes, _I_ already signed up. But you know what? There's nothing wrong with a little whining now and then. It's good for the digestive system.) There's even a prize for the best scene, so check it out!


	5. Big Ideas

**A/N** What went wrong last chapter? Did you all hate it and were afraid to tell me? Was it so unbearably dull that you fell asleep before you could even think about hitting the review button? I don't think you quite understand how crushing it is for a budding authoress to suddenly have her review count cut in half. sniff sniiiiffffff

For you of you who did take the time to review, THANK YOU! Your words and your thoughtfulness are very encouraging.

Chapter 5

**In Which Several Children Begin to Get Big Ideas**

_Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure._

_-Herman Melville_

The door swung open with a soft creak, and a small boy with olive skin and curly black hair crept into the room. On the bed lay a girl with the same skin and hair and a white bandage around her throat. "Hello, Demetrios," she whispered.

The boy scowled. "How come you always know it's me?"

Ariadne giggled. "Because you breathe too loud."

Her younger brother spent a moment trying to listen to the air moving in and out of his lungs, stopped breathing in the process, and decided that his sister was hearing things. "Ari," he whispered intensely, "did you really see the Batman?"

"No."

"Oh." Demetrios' disappointment saturated his whisper.

"I never see anything, silly." Ariadne giggled again.

Hope flared again on the young boy's face. "Don't tease, Ari. Was he _there_?"

"Yes. He …" Ariadne broke off and held up a silencing hand when Demetrios tried to speak. "Wait, Hector and Niko are coming."

"How do you know? Do they breathe loud, too?"

"No, they have big feet."

A moment later, two dark heads appeared at the window, apparently attached to bodies balanced on the fire escape outside. The window was pushed up, and Hector and Nikolai, the oldest Pappas children, crawled in.

"What are you doing here, Demetrios?" the tallest one asked softly. "Ariadne is supposed to be resting."

"What are you doing here, Hector?" the nine-year-old shot back.

Hector just grinned and roughly tousled his smallest brother's hair.

"Tell us, Ari," Niko demanded, perching on the end of the bed.

"About what?" she asked innocently.

"About the Batman." Hector's hand snaked beneath the covers and grabbed the girl's foot, which he began to tickle. She shrieked and kicked him.

"Shh!" Niko whispered urgently. "Mama will hear, and then we'll all be in for it!" He drew a slashing motion across his throat.

Demetrios took advantage of his small size and snuggled up against his sister's side. "Tell us, Ari," he pleaded.

"All right. What do you want to know?"

"Everything, from the beginning," Hector commanded.

"Well," she began slowly, "I was spending the night with Aunt Voula, and she doesn't close the shop until late because many people come to sell their things at night. She was just telling me I should go upstairs to bed when three people came into the shop, two men and one woman. One man told aunt he would cut her throat if she did not give him the money from her cash box."

Niko chuckled. "I bet that twisted old Voula's heart. She loves that box as if it were her son."

Hector bopped him on the head. "Speak respectfully of your elders."

"What happened _next_?" Demetrios pleaded.

"I…I'm not sure. I felt…I felt as if a great wind was rushing toward us and then…and then Aunt was gone and the woman had me by the arm, like this." Ari twisted her arm up over her head to demonstrate. "And her knife was on my throat, here." She touched the white bandage.

Hector growled something that might have been a curse and Demetrios buried his face in Ariadne's stomach.

"She was so strong," the girl continued, almost dreamily. "Like a lioness. And her voice was always calm. But I thought she was frightened of something, or excited, because she kept pinching my arm, like this!" She made a sudden grab at Demetrios' arm, and he shrieked and tumbled off the bed.

The four siblings froze, but no wrathful mama appeared.

"When did the Batman come?" Demetrios asked, climbing back up.

"He was already there, but I only knew it because she spoke to him. He was so quiet – I have never heard anyone so quiet. Then they began to argue because they did not know what to do. She wanted to make the Batman take his mask off, but the men were too afraid of him."

Her brothers listened, spellbound, as she detailed Louis's relation of his vision and the ensuing tension with Will and the woman.

"And then," she paused for dramatic effect. "…there was a knock at the door. A boy was there. He gave Louis something and told him to go home. Everything would be all right and the Batman would not attack. All this time, the lioness is holding me." Ariadne pantomimed the knife again. "Will calls to her, 'Let's go!' So she pulls the knife like this," she drew a line across her throat, "and I am falling to the floor. But the Batman catches me and then we run out into the street and to his car."

"Where you scared?" Demetrios whispered.

Ari shook her head. "Not of the Batman. He was…" She struggled to find a word to describe that brief minute when she was held so tightly she could never fall and carried so fast no evil in the world could catch them. "He smelled like Papa," she said finally.

"Papa smells?" Demetrios asked.

"Never mind," Niko said hastily, knowing how long it would take Ari to try and explain the reasoning of her sense imagery. "Just go on."

"I sat with the other one in the car. He was like you, Niko, your size, and he had a mask on his face. He told me they wouldn't hurt me, and then he asked my name. I told him, and he told me his was Robin Hood, and then we were at the hospital. That's all."

All three boys exploded into questions.

"My size?" Niko demanded, his voice cracking in his excitement. "You think he was my age?"

"Did the Batman talk to you?" Hector wanted to know.

"Why did St. Nicholas come and talk to the robbers?" Demetrios wanted to know. "He's Niko's saint, and he never talks to Niko!"

The bedroom door was flung open "_What _are you doing in here?" Athena Pappas swept into the room in a gusty wind of outrage. "Out! Out! Out!" With each repetition, she slapped the ear of one of her sons. "Your sister is almost killed, and you pester her with questions! _Out!_"

Demetrios just made it out before the door slammed an inch away from his heels. The three boys retreated into the bedroom they shared.

"I would give anything to see the Batman," Niko said fervently. "I'd _do_ anything to be that kid Ari said was my age."

Hector snorted as he threw himself down on his bed. "Before your dreams get too big, little brother, remember that Ari is blind."

"But she doesn't get things wrong," Niko shot back. "You _know_ that. Tell me the last time she made a mistake about somebody."

Hector shrugged. "No, usually she doesn't, but why would the Batman have a little kid with him?"

"We're not so little!" Niko protested, already having completely identified himself with the mysterious sidekick.

Hector stood and stretched up to his full five feet, ten inches. "Oh no?" he teased, towering over Niko, who was his junior by two years. "You look pretty shrimpy to me."

Niko clenched his fists, but before he could attack, a handful of pebbles sailed through the open window. Hector strode over to the window and stuck his head and shoulders out. Pedro, his best friend from the first floor apartment, stood in the street, waving a soccer ball over his head. "Behind the drugstore in five minutes!" he called. "Bring your brother!"

"All right!" His grievance forgotten, Niko bolted out of the room and for the front door, Hector right behind him.

"Can I come too? Please, Hector!" Demetrios begged.

Niko cast him an impatient glance. "You're too little to play."

"I'll just watch. I won't even say anything! Please!"

The door to the other bedroom opened and Athena appeared. "Where are you going?" she demanded.

"To play soccer behind Sims," Hector said, twisting the deadbolt.

"We eat in one hour. If you aren't here you go hungry," Athena snapped. "And take Demetrios with you."

"Ah, mama!" Niko protested, but immediately silenced beneath Athena's flashing gaze.

"Maybe you'd rather stay here and play with him?"

Niko grabbed his little brother's hand and ran for the stairs.

* * *

Trevor Wren was fifteen, smart, and bored. His father had gotten him the day off from school so that they could go to the Gotham Griffins vs. Boston Red Sox game, but at the last minute, he needed the ticket to schmooze up some new client, so Trevor was home alone. He wasn't disappointed about the game – he harbored little fondness for his father (whom he had seen only one month a year plus Christmas before his mother had remarried and thrust over the custody rights) and was aware that his father found the company of his only son somewhat tedious. Trevor, who also loathed baseball, was confident that his current state of boredom would be short lived. There was always something to do. It was just a matter of finding it.

He signed out of his Hotmail account and apathetically watched the MSN news page load. His eyes drifted over war in the Middle East and a scientific breakthrough by German scientists, and then narrowed with sudden interest on an account of a Batman sighting. Over the past five years, Batman sightings had become a dime a dozen – every night, the Gotham Globe Batwatch Hotline received calls placing the elusive figure in sixteen places simultaneously, and the media had gradually subsided to reporting only the most spectacular of masked crusader's crime stopping exploits.

But this was different from anything Trevor had ever seen before. No two bat sightings ever reported the same thing, but there was one detail they all agreed on – the Batman worked alone. This article tag queried, _Batman joined by Batboy?_

He clicked on the link and scanned the brief text, then went to the Gotham Globe's site and read their slightly more informative article.

_Ariadne Pappas, who is blind, was unable to provide a description of Batman's alleged companion._

Trevor hastily pulled up another page and typed in a few commands, then got up from his chair to grab his keys and wallet before heading for the subway. Several miles away from his dad's exclusive gated community, he found a pay phone and dialed a number from memory.

Someone on the other end of the line picked up. "Wolfe investigative services."

"Mr. Wolfe, this is Mr. T. You found out some things for me a few months ago?"

"Of course. What can I do for you?"

"I have some more things I'd like to know. If you're available."

There was a slight pause and then Wolfe asked, "Same terms as last time?"

Trevor smiled. He had concealed the fact that he was a minor by routing Wolfe one and a half times his usual hourly rate over the Internet. Not that, considering the usual kinds of business he took in, the investigator would have any scruples about transacting with anyone who had cash up front, but Trevor enjoyed the thrill of suspense the subterfuge added.

"Of course. Your cover charge is already in your account."

"What would you like to know?"

When Trevor reached home, the address for Athena and Ariadne Pappas was already waiting in his secure e-mail account, as well as Wolfe's best guess at the identities of the robbers. Trevor found the Pappas' street on a map and changed into ragged jeans and a paint stained t-shirt, as well as rinsing the gel out of his carefully styled hair, before he headed out again.

* * *

Will Rice had only two articles of faith. The first was that money was everything. It was comfort, it was power, and it was all the love a guy needed. His second article of unshakeable faith was that his brother Louis saw things.

In the small Appalachian community where they had grown up, the "sight" was not unheard of. Mrs. Applegate, who lived just over the creek a mile south of Will's house, claimed that she had seen a black crow circling her chimney before each of the deaths of her two sons, her husband, and her mother. Mrs. Bartholomew, who lived a mile north of Will's house, claimed that the ghost of Mr. Applegate had come to warn her just before the crop destroying hailstorm of '54. (Mrs. Applegate, incensed at the claim that her husband's spirit would visit another woman, had not spoken to Mrs. Bartholomew in over twenty-five years.) But the difference between Mrs. Applegate's and Mrs. Bartholomew's sight and Louis's, was that Louis told Will what he had seen before anything happened. The neighbor ladies only mentioned their visions after the fact.

When Louis was seven years old, he had solemnly informed his older brother that a cow was going to jump over the moon. The next day, they had been walking by naked Jake's (it was Jake's ambition to found the state's first nudist colony; the glen people just assumed he was a little daft and gave him the same tolerant kindness they granted to small children and prize winning hogs) when Adams' dog (who got his name from his black and white coloring; he was the neighborhood's favorite joke, and more than one good natured visitor to the glen had spent a fruitless hour walking the hillside in search of Adams' "missing" Cow) came tearing through on a coon scent. Jake was bent over, pulling a couple of stray weeds out from between his carrots, his enormous behind shining white in the spring sun. Cow, on a collision track with the oblivious gardener, sprang straight up and over and ran off into the woods. Will had been a believer ever since.

When Will turned eighteen, their mamma, a former school teacher from Gotham City who had beaten the hill accents out of her boys with a belt, died, and so Will, Louis in tow, had taken off for the promised land of the big city. If you didn't have too many scruples, it wasn't hard for a bright, able-bodied young man to scrape a niche for himself in the underbelly of Gotham.

A steady string of low-risk burglaries kept them in relative comfort and began to build up a nice nest egg. Will dreamed of a hardware store in Metropolis (he wanted a clean start when he went into honest trade). Louis dreamed of the roof caving in, and they moved just before the building was condemned and the rest of the tenants evicted.

It was just after this that the woman found them and pulled the hardware store five years out of the future into the present. She offered the brothers ten thousand dollars cash to let her accompany them on their business trips for a week, half the money up front. She claimed to be an investigative journalist writing a book on daily life in the underworld.

It was on the fourth day of her week that they ran into the Batman. Will, caught between the Bat's threatening presence on one side and Louis's vision on the other, endured the most nerve wracking hour of his life. When they were safely home, he swore that that was it. They were _through_. He started packing for Metropolis, and Louis left to burn a dozen candles of thanks at the church.

Before Louis returned, the woman appeared (through a locked door) and handed Will the other half of the ten thousand. "Forget you ever met me," she said coldly. "If you tell anyone about our transaction, your brother will not wake up the next morning."

Will privately decided that she wasn't a journalist, and he and Louis left the city on the5 a.m. train. Will was determined to leave everything about Gotham behind and make a completely fresh start to a completely new life. He was very unhappy when the detective showed up at their completely untraceable apartment, three days later.

* * *

"How's Dick?" Bruce asked, not looking up from his computer screen as Alfred entered the caverns.

"You could go up and see for yourself. He's been looking for you."

Bruce remained silent and punched a little more aggressively at his keyboard.

"Are you going to punish him with the silent treatment on top of everything else?"

"I am not punishing him."

"Then what do you call it?"

Bruce could feel his butler's eyes boring into the back of his skull, and he resisted the urge to cringe down in his chair. "What do you want, Alfred?"

"At the moment, I'd like to take my five iron to the side of your head, but I don't suppose that would actually solve anything."

"You know, I'm not exactly enjoying this."

"You or anyone else."

Anger was more comfortable than the guilt he'd been bearing all day. "What were you expecting me to do, Alfred? You were the one who said that talking to him wouldn't be enough."

"I wasn't _expecting_ you to resort to child abuse."

All of the color drained from Bruce's face and his eyes went black with fury. "Alfred, don't you _ever_ say that again."

Alfred's angry expression melted with regret. "I'm sorry, sir. That wasn't true. But when I see him black and blue from head to toe…" He suddenly looked his age, weariness drawing his face into deep wrinkles. "Are you sure this shouldn't be deferred until he's older?"

"You were the one who pointed out that he's out of control, _now_."

"But what are you hoping to accomplish? I cannot believe that he will be … "

"Beaten into submission?" Bruce finished bitterly. "No. But this is only the first step."

"What next?"

Bruce shrugged. "A tour of Gotham, from the bottom up. He needs to know what it is that he's so gung ho to fight for. If it's any consolation, I'm doing precisely what I would had I been planning to…" He hesitated.

"Raise him to join you?" Alfred supplied.

"Yes." He smiled grimly. "Still think I'm doing the right thing?"

The butler watched him steadily, all traces of his earlier anger gone. "I don't know that I understand. But I trust you."

Bruce's laugh was harsh. "I wish I did."

_To Be Continued_

**A/N** I realize Dick sort of got squeezed out of that chapter, but he'll be back full force next time. In the meanwhile, how about a quick review to let me know what you think?

Seriously, about the whole review thing – I've been thinking about it quite a bit lately, because it's part of what I talk about in my paper, and I've come to a theory about why fan fiction writers are so hooked on reviews. If you're interested, I've posted a short article answering the question "Why Review?" on my user profile.


	6. Nerves

**A/N **Happy Sunday! Thank you, as always, to all reviewers. Each of your comments was perused with great delight.

Chapter 6  
**In Which the Batman and Bruce Wayne Get on People's Nerves**

_Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.  
-Quentin Crisp_

Demetrios crouched at the edge of the broken concrete, watching intently as two groups of boys maneuvered a worn soccer ball back and forth. The space was actually a parking lot, but during the day it was mostly empty and Mr. Sims, owner of Sims Drugstore, didn't care if they played there as long as they kept the ball away from the windows.

Niko, taking advantage of his short height, suddenly ducked beneath an opposing player's arm, stole the ball, and shot it neatly past the goalie and between the two trash-filled boxes.

"Goooooal!" screamed Dememtrios, jumping up and punching the air with his fists.

Nico, much too cool to acknowledge an accolade from his little brother, casually accepted his teammates' high fives and slaps on the back.

"That guy's pretty good," an unexpected voice spoke over Demetrios' head.

The little boy threw out his chest. "That's my brother," he said before he even looked up. When he did, he found a strange white kid standing next to him.

"You guys play a lot?"

Demetrios was immediately distracted by his personal grievance. "_They_ do. I'm not allowed because I'm…" he made a sour face, "_too little_."

"Well, if that kid's your brother, I bet you're pretty good."

"I'm not so bad," Demetrios agreed. "You play?"

The strange guy grinned. "No, not really. Maybe if I lived in a place like this I would, though. You guys got all kinds of awesome stuff going on."

Demetrios' gave his best imitation of Hector's disdainful snort. "You kidding me? This place is a dump. It's so boring, the ants fall asleep in the middle of the sidewalk."

"Well nobody plays soccer in my neighborhood. And isn't that girl who just got rescued by the Batman supposed to live around here somewhere?"

"Yeah." Demetrios stuck his hands in his pockets and tried to look cool. "That's my sister."

"Shut up! Your sister?" The older kid was clearly impressed. "Did she tell you all the details?"

"Most of them. Then Mama kicked us out because Ari's supposed to be resting." His face darkened. "Those …" he used a series of words Athena Pappas would have made him eat soap for, "cut her throat." He glared up at the stranger, suddenly suspicious again.

But the kid looked genuinely worried. "Is she ok?"

Demetrios nodded slowly. "Yeah."

"That's good. Hey," the guy said suddenly. "I'm T."

"Demetrios."

"It's really hot out here. You want to go get a soda or something?" He jerked his head in the direction of the drugstore.

The younger boy shook his head. "No money."

"I'll buy. This is the first time I've met someone whose sister got rescued by Batman."

Demetrios hesitated. He wasn't supposed to take things from strangers, but this guy seemed all right, and besides, if they got it from the store it couldn't have drugs in it or anything. _Not like they're paying attention to me anyway,_ he thought resentfully, looking at the absorbed players. _Probably won't even notice I'm gone._

"Ok," he agreed, and followed the kid inside the store.

Sims was an old fashioned kind of drugstore that had a sandwich counter as well as cramped aisles of general necessities. Demetrios and T perched on two of the high stools, and T ordered a couple of cokes.

"Thanks, Mr. Sims," Demetrios said, dutifully remembering his manners as the old man set an ice cold bottle in front of him. T started asking questions then, and before he realized it, Demetrios was talking freely, giving every detail he could remember Ari relating about her adventure with the Batman.

Neither boy noticed the elderly Mr. Sims move casually to the far end of the counter and then exit out the back door. He walked up to the edge of the game and shouted, "Hey, Hector!" It took a moment for his voice to be heard over the scramble of the game, but then the oldest Pappas boy came jogging over. "I thought you might want to know that some guy's in the store talking up your little brother.

Hector's eyes went wide and he glanced at the empty spot where Demetrios had been sitting. The next moment, he was bolting for the store's entrance. Mr. Sims hurried back toward his private door.

Hector burst through the door, setting the bell jangling wildly, and causing the two boys at the counter to look up in surprise. Before T quite realized what was happening, he found himself in a brutal arm lock with his face smashed against the counter top. "You like little boys?" a furious voice was shouting in his ear. "Maybe you think they do a good job working for you? Maybe you…"

"Hey!" Mr. Sims was back behind his counter. "You're going to make trouble, you take it _outside_!"

Without another word, Hector jerked his prisoner up from the counter and marched him outside. By the time they hit fresh air, some of T's daze had worn off, and he gave a quick, catlike jerk which freed him from Hector's grasp.

"Believe me," he threatened, putting up his fists, "you don't want to fight me."

"I think we can handle you," Hector said softly, and T suddenly realized that they were surrounded by a ring of hostile faces.

"Hey!" Demetrios burst through the door.

"Nicolai," growled Hector, not taking his eyes off his enemy, and the younger boy immediately moved to take a firm grip on Demetrios' arm.

Trevor opened his fists and extended his hands in supplication. "We were just talking, I swear. I just wanted to know about the Batman."

"Oh, and what's he going to know about the Batman?" Hector sneered.

"Well, your sister…"

"So now you know about my sister, too?"

"Not like that!" T took an involuntary step backward, away from the wrath in Hector's face.

"It's true," Demetrios burst out. "He was just asking, like, what did the Batman wear, and what were his weapons, and did that kid have any weapons."

Hector's glance flickered to his brothers and back to T.

"Hey!" Pedro whispered urgently. "Cop car down the street."

Hector stepped closer so that his face was mere inches away from T's. He said quietly, "If you ever come back here again, I will cut you so bad, people are gonna think you fell in a blender." He lifted his hand so that T could just see the gleam of a switchblade between his fingers.

Hector stepped back, grabbed Demetrios' arm from Nico, and started home. The rest of the boys slowly dispersed while T, not quite running, headed for the train station.

* * *

Gordon tried not to be grumpy as he sat on the roof of the police station, waiting, again, for the Bat to decide to show. He realized that the mysterious crime fighter was not the exclusive property of the GPD and had every right to an agenda of his own, but the creeping feeling of annoyance was still getting the better of the tired cop. He had, after all, spent hours waiting when he should have been hurrying back home to patch things up with Barbara. Again.

"You called?" a quiet voice said behind him.

"Nice of you to show," Gordon snapped before he could summon the willpower to hold his tongue.

Characteristically, the Bat simply folded his arms and stared, waiting.

_Why can he always make me feel like I've just been sent to detention?_ He should have known better than to try sarcasm. Standing (it made him feel a little less like a miscreant student), Gordon shoved his hands in his pockets and asked, "Heard about the casino robbery?"

"Yes."

"We've got nothing. Absolutely nothing. No leads, no suspects, not even any _ideas_."

"If they don't get their money back, how badly is this going to hurt them?"

"Pretty bad. They were already in trouble, thanks to that new place on the north side. This will pretty much finish the present owners."

"Anyone looking to buy them out?"

"Not that they mentioned." Gordon tugged at his mustache thoughtfully. "You think that this was more than just robbery?"

The Bat shrugged. "You got any other ideas?"

_You know I don't._ Aloud, the police chief said, "I'll look into it."

"Where are you on the pawnshop robbery?" the Bat growled.

"You were really there?"

"Yes."

"We got a bizarre story out of the girl. Really bizarre. She says one of the thieves had some sort of religious vision in the middle of the robbery."

"He did."

Gordon shook his head. "They just get nuttier and nuttier. Must be something in the water." There was short pause and then he muttered, "Sorry. That wasn't funny. Anyway, yeah, we got a lot of details out of the girl. Not much from the old lady. She says they knocked her out first thing, and she didn't wake up until it was all over. She didn't even know you were there. She unconscious when you came?"

"No. I saw her shove the girl at the attackers and make a run for it."

Gordon puckered his lips in a startled, silent whistle. "She didn't mention that."

"Do you have any ideas about the identities of the thieves?"

"The girl said there were two men and a woman. The men we might have a lead on – brothers, fairly new to the scene, specialize in small burglaries. The youngest one is supposed to be clairvoyant or something, which would fit. But we haven't heard anything about a woman being with them." Gordon paused to see whether the Bat had a comment to insert. He didn't. _Surprise, surprise_. "That girl's a pretty sharp kid, despite the fact she can't see anything. If her impressions of people are as good as I think they are, then it seems like the woman just didn't fit with the other two. She sounded…more dangerous, although that brings up the question of why she was taking orders from the brothers."

"Yes," the Bat said unexpectedly. "She was dangerous. Very dangerous."

"And you don't have any idea where they went?"

"No."

Gordon was dying to ask questions. It wasn't often that the Bat let three criminals just walk away. But over the years he had developed a feel for when it was right to push for more information, and at the moment, his instinct was screaming at him to leave it alone.

"Ok," the police chief sighed. "Keep your ear open for this casino thing, will you?"

The Bat nodded once and was gone.

Gordon picked up his coat and briefcase and went downstairs and out to the parking lot. Despite the late (or early) hour, someone else was there, unlocking the door of the car right next to his. As he fumbled for his own keys, he dimly recognized one of the newer detectives in the main precinct.

She smiled at him as she slipped into her car. "Good night, Chief!"

He nodded and lifted a hand in acknowledgment. What _was_ her name? Easle? Essel? _Something like that_. He thought he remembered O'Hara giving a glowing report of her work previous to her transfer.

Gordon pulled out of the parking lot and headed home. Glancing at the dashboard clock, he repressed a sigh. Earlier than some nights, but later than he'd said he would be. _Something's gonna give. Sooner or later, something's gotta give._

* * *

Sarah Essen watched the taillights of Gordon's vehicle disappear down the street. _He doesn't even remember my name,_ she thought glumly as she put her car in reverse and pulled out of her parking spot. Ever since she had joined the force five years ago, her admiration for the now chief of police had been growing. She was impressed by his intelligence, his tenacity, and above all by his unswerving integrity, and she had put in a for a transfer to the downtown precinct in the hope that she would get a chance to watch him work up close.

She got her chance – at times it seemed like Gordon lived in the station; nothing major happened that he wasn't immediately on top of. Her hero worship hadn't diminished with the close up view. If anything, it had intensified, and, if she were completely honest with herself, it was beginning to veer toward something less platonic.

_Get a grip Essen_, she told herself angrily as she swung out into the street. _The man's married, after all._

_Not very happily,_ a rebellious voice whispered at the back of her mind.

_That's none of your business_, she told the voice. _Still, it would be nice to see him relax once in a while._

* * *

Three days later, Alex Peaceable climbed into the front passenger seat of the Aston Martin. Dick was already in the back, and Alfred started the engine.

"Nervous?" Alex asked, turning to look in the backseat as they drove down the winding drive.

Dick looked confused. "No. Should I be?"

Alex barely refrained from rolling his eyes. They were on their way to the kid's first ever chess competition, and he was displaying absolutely no normal emotions about it. Either he was so sure he would smoke the competition that he was actually bored, or he just plain didn't care what happened. Alex found that he had no idea which possibility was the truth.

"Where's Bruce?" Dick suddenly asked. "I thought he said he was coming."

Alex, listening carefully, thought he caught the faintest tinge of anxiety in the question.

"He had a luncheon engagement," the butler replied calmly. "He is going to meet us at the Sherwood Center."

Alex glanced back again and saw that Dick's placid expression had been replaced with one of worry. The tutor glowered, puzzling again over the adoration with which Dick treated his guardian. Surely he was old and smart enough to begin to perceive what a flake the guy was? Then again, maybe he did, and that was why he was worried.

Alex sighed and settled back into his seat. This whole thing had been his idea. When he had heard of the citywide junior chess competition, he had thought it would be a great opportunity for Dick to get to know some kids his own age with similar interests. Richard Grayson was far too isolated, and if Wayne ruined this experience for him by not showing up, then the spoiled billionaire was going to have Alex Peaceable to deal with.

The large conference room was set up with dozens chessboards, each at its own table. Alfred helped Dick sign in and find his first game, while Alex found their seats. Groupings of chairs had been set up around the perimeter of the room, mostly to be filled by devoted parents, grandparents, and coaches. No one but judges and players was allowed on the floor while the clocks were running. Alex found the three chairs labeled _Wayne_, which offered a great view of the first table Dick would be playing at.

Alfred sat down in the chair on Alex's right as the mayor's wife delivered a welcome speech. The moderator then announced the rules – the most important being a two minute limit per move – and then the clocks were started.

Dick kept glancing toward the empty chair on Alex's left, and the girl across from was taking full advantage of her opponent's distraction. If he wasn't careful, he could be eliminated in the first round. _Get your ass in here, Wayne_, Alex thought furiously, just as there was a small commotion at the door.

"I'm sorry, sir, but no one is allowed on the floor while the clocks are running."

"All I want is to just sit down. Look, the rest of my party's right there."

_Is that…_ Alex glanced over at the door. It was.

"I'm sorry, sir, but those are the rules."

Bruce Wayne glared down at the diminutive and increasingly nervous judge. "I just cut a very important engagement to be here, and all I want to do is walk ten steps to that chair right there." His voice rang clearly across the quiet room.

"Bruce, you made it!" The mayor's plump wife hurried up, a little breathless. "Mr. Wayne is one of the event's main sponsors," she told the judge severely. "I think we can bend the rules a little for him." She took Wayne's arm and personally escorted him to the open seat next to Alex.

Dick looked over and grinned when he saw his guardian. Wayne flashed him a double thumbs up, then leaned over to Alex and hissed, "What'd I miss?"

"He opened with a Sicilian Defense, and I think she's working on some variation of a King's Gambit," Alex whispered back.

Wayne looked blank. "Oh."

Alex repressed a sigh and condescended to whisper, "He doesn't seem quite up to his usual game, and his opponent is quite good."

Wayne turned an assessing stare on the chubby, bespectacled girl who sat across from Dick. "Well, she's no Ash Rai," he decided, a little too loudly. "But, hey, who needs beauty when you've got chess skills?"

"Sshhh!" an angry woman behind them hissed.

To Alex's relief, Wayne settled back in his chair and seemed willing to shut up, but then Dick hit his timer and said, "Checkmate."

A judge hurried over and examined the board, then nodded. There was a small scattering of applause, Wayne joining in a little belatedly and much too loudly. Dick's opponent, obviously struggling not to cry, got up and left and was soon replaced by a redheaded boy. Dick finished him off in twelve moves, and yet another kid took the empty seat.

Wayne's eyes had glazed over and he was slumped down in his chair, although he perked up slightly whenever one of the small rounds of applause sounded. At last he pulled out his phone and began texting. This kept him quietly occupied for a few minutes, but before long he gave a quiet chuckle. Alex glanced over to see the billionaire grinning down at his phone. Rolling his eyes, he turned back to the game, doing his best to pretend the person on his left didn't exist. That became rather difficult when, a minute later, Wayne let loose a full bellied guffaw.

"Shhh!" the lady behind them said so fiercely that specks of spit landed on the back of Alex's neck.

Wayne ignored her and nudged Alex in the ribs. "This is good one. These three lawyers walk into a bar…"

"Wayne…"

"…and the first one says to the bartender…"

"Wayne!"

"… 'I'd like a…"

"Wayne, I do not want to hear your stupid joke!" There was a shocked silence, and Alex realized that he had spoken much louder than he had intended. A floor judge, Alfred, and Dick's current opponent were all glaring at him.

"Shhh," Wayne said reprovingly.

* * *

For his fourth game, Dick moved to a board on the far side of the room, and Bruce could stop pretending to not pay attention and really zone out. During the past two nights, he had made attempts to track down the criminal trio from the pawnshop. Steady police work on Gordon's part, however, had indicated that the brothers had left the city, putting them out of the Batman's range. Of the woman, neither the police nor the Batman could find anything – not even a rumor on the streets, and that worried Bruce. For the past five years, he had been slowing weeding the remaining agents of the League of Shadows out of the criminal underground of Gotham City, and he had become very familiar with the signs of their presence. One of the most telling was that they worked under so many layers of secrecy, that most of those who worked for them didn't even realize it, and if they were so close that knowledge was unavoidable, they kept their mouths shut.

Bruce suddenly realized that Alex and Alfred had stood and were walking toward the door. He hurried after them and caught up as they met Dick, who was shaking one of the judge's hands. "Better luck next time, young man," the elderly gentleman was saying kindly.

"Thank you, sir," Dick said politely.

Bruce glanced around the room at the other tables. Dick and his partner were the first done. _He lost that pretty fast._

"Well, win some, lose some," Peaceable said cheerfully as they left the conference room and headed for the exit. "That last guy must have been pretty tough."

"Yeah," Dick agreed, a little too quickly and brightly. "Like you said, win some, lose some."

Bruce's eyes met Alfred's behind Peaceable's back, and the butler gave a minuscule shrug.

"I told Fox I'd run by the Tower for a few minutes when this was over," Bruce said as they reached the parking lot. "You want to come, chess geek?"

"Yeah!" Dick said happily.

"See you at home, Alfred. 'Bye, Peaceable. I'll have to tell you that joke some other time," Bruce said innocently.

"Goodbye, Mr. Wayne," Alex Peaceable returned, his usual calm once again intact.

Bruce zipped the Saleen S7 out of the parking garage as Dick remarked, "You really got on Alex's nerves today."

Bruce allowed himself a tiny smile. He couldn't deny that he got a deviant enjoyment out of setting the tutor's teeth on edge. Alex Peaceable had had Bruce Wayne condemned, sentenced, and committed before they had even met, and if that prejudice meant that the tutor was particularly open to irritation, well, that wasn't Bruce's fault. He declined to comment, however, and asked instead, "Why did you throw that last game?"

Dick shrugged. "Oh, you know, that guy wanted to win pretty bad and I didn't really care. Besides, I was starting to get tired of it," he confessed. "Those kids weren't very good."

"No, I guess they weren't." Frankly, Bruce thought it had been unfair to send Dick up against normal thirteen-year-olds, but Peaceable had been rather forceful about the proposition.

"Besides, I didn't think it was a good idea for everybody to think that I'm, you know, really smart or anything." Before Bruce could work through the implications of _that_ one, the boy continued, "I thought maybe you weren't going to come."

"I said I would."

"Yeah, but that was before." He didn't have to specify before what.

Bruce frowned into the bright sun as he slipped into a gap between a bus and a Corvette. "Why would that make a difference?"

"I thought you were mad at me. You haven't been talking to me except…in the mornings."

Bruce sighed. "I'm not mad at you. I just…"

"Just what?" Dick insisted.

Abruptly, Bruce made up his mind to be brutally honest. "I wish you didn't want to do this."

Dick was smart enough to realize that the conversation no longer had anything at all to do with chess. "Why not?" he finally asked, sounding stunned.

"Because it turns half your life into hell, and I wanted something better for you."

"I don't believe that."

"Not yet, you don't."

"Are you going to make me stop?" Dick asked, and to his credit there was no pleading in his voice.

"No. But I'm going to try and convince you to stop."

"Ok," Dick said quietly, as the car slid into Bruce's reserved spot at the Tower.

"Are you coming up?"

"I think I'll just wait here, if that's ok."

"Ok," Bruce echoed, and headed for the elevators.

_To Be Continued_

**A/N** Yeek! These chapters just get longer and longer! I realize this was another chapter full of character setup, but I think everyone's in position now, so next time we'll see some real action! Although, to be honest, this story is a more contemplative one, so the characters are going to be doing a lot of talking and thinking.

Please review! And like I said, I don't have a lot of action planned for this story, but there's definitely space to work some extra stuff in, so if you have any ideas that you think would work well, let me know!


	7. Felonies and Starbucks

**A/N** This is a chapter of insane proportions. At least, it feels that way to me. Anyway, I'm apologizing in advance for any irregularities. It's very late, but I want to post it because I have a very difficult week coming up in school, and I don't want to delay the update yet again! Thank you so much all who reviewed the last chapter!

Chapter 7

**In Which Dick Commits a Felony and We See Evidence that Starbucks Really Is Trying to Take Over the World**

_For our struggle is … against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world …_

_- Letter of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians_

She was tall and slender, with clear olive skin backed by a shimmering curtain of blue-black hair. As she walked through the hotel lobby, her heels clicking softly on the marble, she appeared unaware of the appreciative glances that every man within a fifty foot radius was sending her, unless you counted the tiny smile that flickered across her full mouth when the elevator boy did a double take at her legs. It was, however, a smile with a hint of cruelty, and it might have been just as well for the boy that he kept his eyes firmly fixed on his buttons during the ride up to the fortieth floor – the one where the luxury executive suites began.

Her heels were deadened by thick carpet this time, as she glided down the hallway, her sinuous grace like that of a panther – sleek beauty, velvet power, and a hint of deadliness. She was a woman who knew where she was going, and she would allow nothing to stand in her way.

Inside suite 4017, she kicked off her heels and threw her purse on the bed before wandering over to the window and looking out with a discontented air. The day was gray, and her view was obscured by sweeping sheets of rain that the wind dashed against the windows. The skyscrapers around the hotel wavered through the water, and she spun away impatiently. Glancing at her watch, she walked over to the phone and dialed a long distance number.

"Hello? I'd like to speak with Mr. Luthor, please."

Her eyebrows rose haughtily at whatever answer she received. "I'm certain he's busy," she responded, a touch of ice in her tone, "but would you just tell him Selina Kyle is calling? … My business is Mr. Luthor's business, not yours, and I can promise you he will be very upset if you don't tell him I am on the phone, _now_." She shook her hair away from her face and tapped her manicured nails impatiently on the table while the faint strains of a call waiting symphony drifted through the receiver. A new voice came on the line. "Lex? Yes, of course it's me. You have an imbecile answering your phone … Yes, it's done. Everything's gone, ready for you to move in … I told you he wouldn't be a problem … No, we've discussed this and it's not a good idea for me to be on the front of this one. Just send Benson like you planned … What? … No, I'm not upset. That's very interesting … Let him proceed, I'm curious to see what he comes up with … All right, I'll be back on Sunday. Goodbye."

She gently laid the phone back in the cradle and turned her attention to a slew of magazines that spread across the table. Some lay face up, their main feature prominently displayed, while others were opened to a particular article, but from every one, the same charming, insouciant smile blazed up at her. She pulled an issue of _Headlines_, Gotham's most reliable news magazine, toward her and examined the cover thoughtfully. The photo tag read, _Playboy announces plans for charitable foundation,_ and the focus of the picture was an immaculately suited Bruce Wayne, standing between the mayor's wife and Lucius Fox.

"You intrigue me, Mr. Wayne," Selina murmured, dropping into a chair. "You intrigue me very much."

* * *

The last bell of the day jangled through the halls of Bailey, Gotham's premier college prep academy. Trevor Wren quickly put his books in his bag, and then took his time getting the zipper shut. Most of the students had already stampeded out, headed for their lockers and freedom, but a few others were taking their time, one red-headed sophomore in particular. At last she swung her bag over her shoulder and headed out the door. Trevor mimicked her action and followed.

Watching her walk down the hall was interesting. She was pretty – very pretty – and even senior guys took a second look. But the set expression of her face discouraged any advance, however casual, and her uncertain social status made her something of an enigma. She was a scholarship student, and her parents were not in the same income bracket as most of those of the other students. On the other hand, her father was the chief of police, so generic brand clothes or not, nobody was quite ready to mess with Barbara Gordon. She made it all the way to her locker without so much as a friendly "Hi" from anyone of either sex.

Trevor waited until she had pulled her books out and clicked the lock shut before speaking. "Hey, Barbara."

She looked over, surprise turning into disdain when she saw who had addressed her. That she didn't like him, Trevor knew. Why this was so, he wasn't sure, but if things went according to plan, that, along with many other things, would be changing.

She didn't speak, but was apparently waiting for him to explain himself, so Trevor ventured, "There's something I need to talk to you about."

Her eyes flicked dismissively over him. "No, I don't think there is." She began to walk away.

Undaunted, Trevor hurried after her. "It's about the Batman," he said in a low voice.

It got her attention, like he had known it would. "What would you know about the Batman?" she hissed, unconsciously imitating his quiet tone and glancing around to make sure no one could overhear them.

"Enough. More than the stupid gossip around here that you always eavesdrop on." She gave him a startled glance, and he hoped he hadn't gone too far. It was a calculated risk, letting her know that he had been watching her, and he hastened to qualify the statement. "Anytime anyone says the word 'Batman' you stop behind them and listen. It gets noticeable after awhile."

The anger that had darkened her face lessened a little. "So what's this fabulous news you have an exclusive on?" she snapped.

He glanced around again – there were too many people in the halls. "Not here. Let's go to that Starbucks on the corner."

Her eyes narrowed. "Was this some kind of bet? To see if you could get me to go out with you?"

"No, I swear Barbara! Twenty minutes, that's all I ask."

"I'll miss the bus."

"I'll pay for your taxi home."

She was still reluctant, but he could tell that her curiosity was getting the better of her. "All right," she finally agreed. "But we're not walking together. You go ahead and I'll meet you there."

"Whatever you want," Tyler agreed, saving his triumphant smile until she had turned her back and walked away. He hurried out of the school and down the block to the convenient Starbucks, where he purchased a latte and settled at a corner table with his back to the wall. The coffee shop was nearly deserted at this time of day, and he immediately spotted Barbara when she came through the door five minutes later.

She didn't bother with coffee but came straight over and sat across from him. "Make this fast," she said coldly. "I have to get home."

"I tracked down that girl that the Batman saved last week," he said without preamble. "I talked to her brother. And I got a statement from the thieves who held her up."

She stared. "How did you do that?"

"I hired a private investigator. It's not that difficult."

"Why are you so interested in the Batman?"

"Isn't everybody? But it wasn't him that mainly caught my attention. It was that guy who was supposedly with him."

"Robin Hood?" she asked in disbelief. "I thought that was just a rumor the press blew up."

"No. He was really there, _with_ Batman. He held Ariadne – the girl – on the way to the hospital. Her brother told me all about it."

"Whoa," she said softly, and Trevor saw that he had finally impressed her. Her brilliant green eyes were no longer narrow with suspicion but wide with amazement. "Why are you telling me all this?" she finally asked.

"I've been thinking. According to Ariadne, this guy was about her brother Nico's size. He's fourteen and not very tall – maybe 5'2."

"I thought the newspaper said she was blind," Barbara interrupted.

"She is. But Demetrios, that's the brother I talked to, says that she knows things anyways. Maybe he was lying but…" Trevor shrugged. "Why would he? It's not like I was paying him or anything. Anyway, if he's right, that kid could have been younger than us."

Barbara shook her head, setting her strawberry blond curls swaying. "That's crazy."

"It's a fact," Trevor insisted. "And if this kid can do it – I mean, he's like the Batman's sidekick! – then why can't we?"

She stared at him as if he were crazy. "Maybe because we don't know the Batman?"

"No, no," he said impatiently. "What if there were a group of us? What if we organized and trained and watched for opportunities?"

"Opportunities for what?"

"To stop robberies, break up gangs, anything! Stuff's always going down in this town." He leaned forward across the table, his grey eyes intense. "Just because we're in high school, it doesn't mean we're powerless."

"Break up gangs?" Barbara asked slowly. "But…wouldn't we _be_ a gang?"

"Maybe. But a gang with a purpose. I've seen you, Barbara. You go through the day with a sneer on your face because you hate Bailey just as much as I do. It's full of dead people. They run frantically around in their stupid little routine, and they don't what they're doing or why the hell they're doing it. But you and I, we're alive, we _think _and we've got to have a why." He paused, choosing his next words very carefully. "I'm offering you a path. A way out of the meaninglessness of our current pathetic lives."

Barbara stared at him for full silent minute. "You're crazy," she finally said, picked up her book bag, and left.

Trevor watched her go, swirling the last of the latte in his cup, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. She had denounced him, but before that, he had seen a flicker of recognition and fear on her face. Something he had said had rung true.

_She'll be back._ All he needed now was patience.

* * *

Dick followed Bruce down the dark street, a sense of danger pumping up his adrenaline and temporarily defeating his exhaustion. They were in a part of town that was a short ways down the shore from what had used to be the Narrows, and although the city funds which had been poured into reconstruction on the island after the rampant destruction nearly six years ago, the improvements had not spread to the surrounding neighborhoods. Despite the early fall chill that had descended with the night, the smell of garbage still permeated the air like that of a rank vegetation. Dick hadn't been in this part of the city for a long time – not since Rachel Dawes had rescued him from his abusive foster home.

He thought back to earlier that evening when he had dragged himself into the house after his polo lesson, aching because of a clumsy blow from his opponent's mallet. Alfred had met him on the stairs and told him not to shower – he and Bruce were going out that night and they were dressing down for it. Dick glanced down at his holey jeans and ratty t-shirt, absently reached up and pulled down the bill of his stained ball cap so that it cast a deeper shadow over his face. Bruce was dressed in the same way, and Dick still found it difficult to believe that they weren't going to be recognized without even altering their faces. But Bruce had said, _People only see what they want to._ Personally, Dick thought a lot of people would have wanted to see a famous billionaire masquerading in the slums, but he kept his opinion to himself.

It was just before midnight, and there were other people out on the streets. Huddled masses moaned softly in doorways, and other figures leaned against walls and smoked, keeping their faces averted. Every so often, someone would pass them with a quick, nervous stride – the sign of a person who didn't quite belong down here, or who wished they didn't. But what they had in common was furtiveness, a shrinking into the shadows, a clear desire not to be noticed.

Except for her. Dick couldn't help staring as they approached. She stood boldly in the pool of illumination cast by one of the rare streetlights. Her brassy red hair matched the fishnet stockings stretched up her skinny legs to just below the hem of her tiny black skirt. Her face was heavily made up with bright spots of rouge and purple lipstick, and in the yellow light her skin glowed with a freakish pallor. Dick shuddered even as he stared – the overall effect was carnivalesque, almost like…

"You boys look lonely," she said in a low husky voice, stepping forward to put a detaining hand on Bruce's arm as they passed.

He shook her off. "Not tonight, sweetheart."

"Half price for boys," she called tauntingly as they continued on, and Dick felt his skin crawl as he pictured filthy, scarlet nails reaching for him. He pressed a little closer to Bruce, remembering the terse answer he had received when he asked where they were going.

"_Sightseeing. If you're determined to fight, you'd better know what you're doing it for."_

Finally, as the narrow, dirty streets got even closer and filthier, Bruce slowed his purposeful stride and began to amble along, keeping his head down as his eyes darted from side to side. Dick did his best to imitate him, hanging his head and shuffling his feet.

They turned into an alley. There was a group of men standing at the far end around a metal barrel. Occasionally the tip of a flame wavered above the rim, and a couple of the loiterers had their hands stretched out to catch the heat. They stiffened as Bruce and Dick approached, then relaxed as one of them apparently recognized Bruce and nodded.

"Much tonight?" Bruce asked, as they shifted to make room for him around the barrel. Dick stayed slightly back, still keeping his head down.

"Not yet."

"It's early."

There was a little silence, and then another of the men jerked his head at Dick. "Your kid?"

Bruce snorted. "Just according to his mother." A couple of the men chuckled, and Dick, despite himself, felt his face flush with indignation. "Climbs like a monkey, though," Bruce added when the laughter faded.

"Small yet," someone across the barrel said speculatively.

A battered Ford pulled up outside the alley, and all conversation abruptly died. A greasy looking man with a paunch and a bald head climbed out of the passenger side and strode casually up to the group. He stood, hands shoved in his pockets, coolly assessing each member of the group. His eyes fell on Dick and he walked over. "You afraid of heights?" he asked gruffly.

"He's afraid of _me_," Bruce growled, giving the stranger a hostile look.

The stranger remained unperturbed and examined Bruce's height. Nodding as though he were satisfied about something, he said, "You two, and you, and you." He pointed at two of the largest men.

The group of them walked out of the alley and the bald man pulled his car door open. "Be at 759 Cheltenham in forty minutes. A hundred bucks for each of you and fifty for the kid." He waited until he got a nod from the three grown men, then got in the car.

As it drove away, Dick stared confusedly after its taillights. If television was anything to go by, they had just been hired to perform some kind of shady work, but he hadn't thought that Bruce bothered with tiny little sting operations. And how would he stop them without blowing his cover?

The other two men hurried away in different directions, and Bruce took Dick's arm and hustled him across the street and into the entrance of another alleyway. "Are we going to tip off the police or what?" gasped Dick as they hurried along a circuitous maze of tiny streets.

"No."

"We're going to stop them ourselves?"

Bruce glanced down at him, eyebrows raised. "No. We're going to help them. You're the grease man, or didn't you catch that?"

Dick stopped abruptly and said much too loudly, "But…"

"Shh," Bruce cautioned, pulling on his arm. "Keep moving."

"We're going to commit a crime?" Dick hissed.

"Yeah. Now be quiet. Sometimes there's a cop on this street."

Dick shut his mouth, but a small rebellious knot curled up in his stomach. _I want to help keep the law, not break it!_ He was distracted by the sight of a squad car gliding up the street. Bruce abruptly swung into a narrow space, and they waited as the cruiser drove slowly past them.

"Did you know that if Batman was ever actually caught for some of the things he's done, he'd be in prison for life?" Bruce suddenly whispered.

Dick stared up at him in astonishment. "But…but he's been deputized."

"Only since last year. And it's not an entirely stable badge of legitimacy. Come on." Bruce led the way back onto the side walk and they hurried on.

759 Cheltenham turned out to be a small warehouse near the more reputable end of the docks. The bald man and the other two were already waiting when they slipped around to the back of the building.

"Awright," their employer mumbled around a wad of gum. "Kid goes up there, the window's unlocked." He pointed halfway up the side to a small window. "Go down stairs, there's a keypad by the loading door. You punch in seven, seven, four, star, got it?"

"Seven, seven, four, star," Dick repeated obediently.

Bruce craned his head back to look at the window. "How's he get up there?"

"Ladder's coming in the truck." Right on cue, the roar of a motor came from the front of the building. Baldy jabbed his finger at the two men from the burn barrel. "Go get the ladder."

They promptly went around front and a minute later returned carrying an extendable aluminum ladder. With Bruce's help, they stretched it out and raised it against the building.

Baldy reached into his pocket and pulled out a small flashlight and a pair of cheap latex gloves which he shoved at Dick. "No sense in leaving prints if you don't have to. This is a job with benefits." He paused to laugh at his own joke, then ordered, "Now move it!"

Dick put on the gloves and cast a final glance at Bruce, who gave him a slight nod, then swiftly climbed the ladder. The window was unlocked, just as Baldy had promised, and he wiggled through its small space without difficulty. As soon as he was safely through, the men outside took down the ladder and carried it around front.

Dick flipped on his flashlight and found that he was on a narrow walk that ran around the inside wall of the warehouse. The arm of a forklift was raised just beyond the railing, and the floor below was stacked with boxes. He quickly found the stairway and ran down it, making his way to the loading dock. The keypad was right next to the door, and he punched in the code. The next minutes, the door had lifted and a small truck was backing into the dock.

Baldy hopped out of the back and nodded at Dick. "You were fast, kid." He shut the door behind the truck and barked an order at his three movers to start loading the truck. It took only twenty minutes to fill the truck's small trailer with expensive, flat screen TVs. "All right," Baldy said as Bruce shoved a final box inside. "That's it." He shut and secured the doors, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills. "You and the kid," he muttered as he shoved some of the money at Bruce. He paid off the other two and reopened the warehouse door.

"Hey!" one of the men snapped. "You said a hundred bucks, but I only got seventy-five."

Baldy shrugged. "I thought there was going to be something else in here. Market's flooded with televisions, and they're hardly worth a damn thing."

The angry man started forward, "Give me my money, you son of a …" He froze as a gleaming pistol appeared in Baldy's hand.

"Like I said, the TV's aren't worth a damn thing. You're lucky you got seventy five. Now get out of here before I shoot your balls off." He gestured with the gun and shouted, "All of you, get out!"

The moment their disreputable employer had pulled out the gun, Bruce had grabbed Dick's arm and shoved him around the far side of the truck. The moment the command to leave came, they took off, pounding down the street with Bruce still gripping his ward's arm. After a protracted race through the labyrinthine streets, they at last paused for breath beneath a broken streetlight. A concrete barrier ran behind the light, protecting the edge of a steep ditch – large enough to be called a gully. Along the far side ran the freeway, and the noise of fast traffic whizzed over the divide. At the bottom of the gully, a little ways down from where they stood, a fire was burning and several people were sitting or lying around it.

"Ready?" Bruce asked when Richard's breathing had slowed.

He nodded. "Yeah."

Bruce vaulted over the barrier and headed down the steep embankment, and Dick scrambled after him. Some of the ground was covered with cracked concrete, but most of it had crumbled away, and weeds grew thick and high. Garbage crunched beneath his feet and thistles tugged at the legs of his jeans as they waded down and over toward the light.

There were six people settled around the blazing pile of refuse, and the first that Dick noticed about them as he approached was not their filthy clothing or peculiar noises but their smell. It drifted toward him like excessively applied perfume – subtle and elusive at first and then suddenly overwhelming – a mixture of sweat, urine, and smoke. He stopped breathing for a moment, then cautiously pulled in air through his mouth.

Bruce didn't say anything to the assembled group but dropped into a squat and held his hands out toward the blaze. Dick imitated the gestures and got a close up look at the people who were the source of the odor.

There was a very old black man, his bushy hair a shock of dirty white and his face so wrinkled that it resembled a walnut shell. He was huddled as close to the fire as he could get, wrapped in a jacket that was about three times too big and which might have been green or grey or tan but which was now a collage of stains. Every once in a while he shivered as he stared blankly into the flames.

Beyond him a woman sat cross legged, her long, matted blond hair partially obscuring her face. She moaned and muttered as she rocked back and forth, desperately massaging her breasts. Deeply embarrassed, Dick quickly averted his gaze to the next member of the circle. This one also had long, matted hair, but he was pretty sure it was a man. He, if it was a he, lay on his side, staring mesmerized at the burning garbage. Every so often, he would shudder as a high pitched giggle escaped from his gaping mouth.

After that was the most alert human being Dick had seen so far. He was dressed in worn army fatigues and he sat straight up, his legs stuck out in front of him and a bulging backpack by his side. He also seemed to be in charge of the fire because as the flames grew lower, he picked up two ancient shoes from a pile of assorted garbage and dropped them carefully into the heat. As he settled back into his former position, his bright eyes darted restlessly from one member of the group to the other, and finally rested on Dick with an intense and unblinking gaze.

Unsettled, Dick moved his own eyes to the last two strangers. One was a woman who lay prone, her head pillowed on a bundle of rags. She coughed weakly, covering her mouth with a red bandana. Kneeling next to her was an Asian man, and at first glance it was obvious that he did not belong with the rest of the group. For one thing, he was obviously cleaner, and although his clothes were plenty worn, they looked reasonably neat. He was talking to the woman in a low voice, and when Dick listened hard he could make out the words.

"It's going to get a lot colder than this before the night's over. Why won't you come to the shelter?"

The woman coughed again before answering. "I know you mean well, Reverend, but I've had enough charity to last me the rest of my life. I'm through with people telling me how sorry they are so they can feel righteous." The last word exploded in a cough, and she moaned weakly into her bandana.

"You should be back in the hospital," he said worriedly.

"No. They know I'm dying and they're not going to do any more for me. I won't lie there and let squeeze the last of the life out of me so they can have another bed."

"That is completely untrue."

"Oh is it?" She smothered a cough and continued breathlessly, "If you don't mind, talking's a little hard for me right now and I'd like to get some sleep." She closed her eyes and hunched her shoulders up like a turtle retreating into its shell.

The man looked at her silently for a moment, then got to his feet. "Anyone else for a warm bed and free breakfast?" When he received no response, he walked around the circle and crouched next to the one Dick had labeled "Crazy Lady."

"What about you, Rose? Will you come back to the shelter for the night?"

Rose stopped rocking and moaning and stared straight ahead. "Don't touch me!" she suddenly shrieked. "Don't touch me!" Springing to her feet, she plunged into the darkness, and they could hear her crashing through the weeds, still crying, "Don't touch me!"

Sighing, the "Reverend" moved on and laid a gentle hand on the old man's shoulder. "Coming back to the shelter tonight, Walter?"

Walter slowly turned his head and squinted at his interrogator. "Ain't that I don't want to," he murmured in a whispery voice, "but I ain't so sure I can get out of here." He looked up at the high walls of the ravine.

"We'll manage," Reverend said confidently, standing and walking to the other side of the fire so that he could crouch by the guy who was obviously high. "Hey, anyone in there?" He waved his hand in front of the entranced eyes and got no response. Grimacing, he pulled off his jacket and draped it over the comatose form.

"Uh oh!" a loud voice said, and Dick's eyes shot to the man in fatigues who was shaking his head vigorously. "Miss Jamie is not going to like that, no she is not."

"Well, she's forgiven me before, and I think she'll do it again. Ready, Harry?"

Harry jumped to his feet and snapped a salute. "Sir, yes sir!" He picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder.

Reverend came back and slipped an arm around Walter's shoulders. "Ready?" Slowly and tremblingly, the old man got to his feet.

Before they moved away, Reverend looked over at Dick and Bruce. "You fellow need a place to sleep? We got lots of room tonight."

Bruce shook his head. "We're fine, but thanks."

"If you change your mind, we're on the corner of Camden and Third." Slowly, the two began walking up the steep hillside, Harry bounding on ahead of them.

The shelter recruiter wasn't much taller or fatter than Dick himself, and he and the old man stumbled frequently as they climbed the embankment. Suddenly Dick couldn't take it any more. He jumped up and ran to catch up. "Let me help," he offered, taking hold of the old man's free arm.

Reverend nodded in the darkness. "Thanks," he said breathlessly, and the three made it to the top without further difficulty. "My car's right there."

Dick helped stow Walter in the front seat, and turned to find Bruce right behind him. "Let's go," the older man commanded, striding off even as he spoke.

"Thanks again!" Reverend called after them. "Camden and Third!"

They walked briskly in silence, and after a while Dick began to recognize the street they were headed down. With relief, he realized that they must at last be headed back to the car. As they approached the light where he had seen the prostitute, he saw that she no longer stood alone in the pool of illumination. A man in a black leather jacket stood next to her, the light gleaming off his slickly gelled hair.

"You stupid bitch!" he suddenly shouted and slapped her hard across the face. "Can't you do anything?"

Of their own accord, Dick's feet broke into a sprint, only to be brought up short by a restraining hand on the collar of his t-shirt.

"Let me go!"

"You can't help her," Bruce said grimly, getting a firmer grip.

"The hell I can't!"

"If you hurt him, he'll take it out on her, later. If you get him arrested, she won't testify, and when he gets out, he'll beat her. That's the way it works."

Bruce's words registered slowly, but when they did, Dick stopped fighting and dropped his head in defeat. "Just walk," the older man said softly, his guiding hand now gentle as they moved briskly past the pimp and his chattel.

Another crack and a stifled moan came from behind them, and Dick started to run again, forward, desperate to get away from the suffering. He ran blindly toward the haven of the car, tripped over a curb he didn't see, and tumbled headlong, skinning his knees and slicing his palm open on a shard of glass. Bruce was there as he scrambled up and jerked him to the sidewalk as a car roared down the street.

The covered the remaining half block in silence, and when they were settled in the front seat, Bruce switched on the interior light and ordered, "Let's see your hand."

Dick extended his bloody palm. Slivers of glass were embedded in the gash that reached from the base of his middle finger to his wrist. Bruce reached into the back seat and produced a first aid kit. Uncapping a bottle of disinfectant, he poured it liberally over the wound, heedless of the upholstery. "Hold it still until we get home," he said quietly as he pulled car away from the curb.

They didn't pull up the front driveway as Dick had expected, but instead entered the grounds through an obscure service entrance. When Bruce pulled the car to a stop, they were still some distance from the house – in fact Dick couldn't even see it – and it was with an exhausted bewilderment that he opened his door and climbed out. A muted roar greeted his ears, but it was not until they had walked down into a small depression and he saw the waterfall that he understood where they were. His feet grew heavy with dismay and he stumbled. Although that morning he would have given his two front teeth to be taken here, now he wanted nothing to do with the subterranean cavern. He wanted the warm, familiar kitchen in the house, not cold stone and impersonal equipment. And he wanted Alfred with quiet words and comforting smile, not this grim-eyed stranger who plunged him through pain after pain.

There was an infinitesimal and slippery path around the edge of the waterfall. They navigated it slowly, and stepped into the cold darkness of the caves. Bruce turned on the floodlights and directed Dick to a stainless steel sink. "Run the water over your hand, but don't rub it."

He obeyed woodenly, a blissful numbness slowly stealing over mind and body. It wasn't that anything he had seen that night was news to him. He understood that level of suffering all too well, but he had managed to forget a lot in the last five years. And he didn't want to be made to remember.

Bruce shut off the tap and led him over to a chair by table that matched the sink. A powerful magnifying lens was suspended on a maneuverable arm, and Bruce positioned Dick's palm under it, soaked a tiny pair of tweezers in disinfectant, and began painstakingly removing the bits of glass and gravel.

Dick didn't want to think about the night, but he couldn't help himself. "That guy," he said slowly, "the one who hired us. He's going to get more than seventy-five dollars for each of those televisions, isn't he?"

"Probably." Bruce deposited a sliver of glass in a small dish on the table.

"Who was that other man?" Dick asked after another moment's thought. "The one helping the homeless people."

"That was the Reverend David Lee. He runs a homeless shelter on, as he told you, Third and Camden. He goes out a lot, looking for people who won't come in by themselves."

"Do you know him?"

"Not really. I think I met him at a benefit once." Bruce pulled out one piece of glass and pushed the lens aside. "Ok, let's disinfect again." The peroxide hissed viciously as it bubbled over the cut, and tears pricked the corners of Dick's eyes. "You can sleep in tomorrow," Bruce said as he capped the bottle. "No gym time. And I'm going to call Peaceable and tell him you're sick."

"Thanks," Dick muttered.

"Go get some sleep. You look half dead."

Dick wearily walked over to the lift and pulled up the grille. "You coming?" he asked.

"Not yet."

On the first floor, instead of heading for the stairs and his bedroom, Dick turned toward the kitchen. Just as he had hoped, the light was on and Alfred sat at the counter, making out menus for the coming week. He looked up as Dick walked through the doorway. "Good evening, Master Dick."

"Alfred," he said, and started to cry.

_To Be Continued_

**A/N** I hope that wasn't too illegible. I'm going to bed before I keel over! Review please?


	8. Nothing Much

**A/N** Caution: Fluff ahead. I wasn't planning for this chapter to turn into a fluff-a-thon, but somehow it did anyway.

A note that I meant to put in last time but forgot: I hereby give hardcore Batman fans fair warning – I am going to mess with the canon. So when something happens that's way out of line with any of the Bat's current histories, just take a deep breath, count to ten, and quash that vicious urge to hurl my broken body off a bridge. (It's not going to happen for a while, but I think you should start preparing yourselves now.)

Chapter 8

**In Which Not Much Happens**

_Wasting your time…and ours._

_- Slogan of Little Fluffy Industries_

Hector, Nicolai, and Demetrios lay flat on their backs – Hector on his single bed and the younger boys on the double bed they shared. The three of them were grounded indefinitely, after Demetrios' escapade with the stranger, and after a week with nothing but school to break the monotony, they were half crazy with cabin fever.

"I told you," Nico said furiously, sitting up so that he could glare at Hector. "I _told_ you we shouldn't have told mama. It's not like anything actually happened!"

Hector remained on his back, staring up at the ceiling. "And I told you," he began in a bored tone, "that Demetrios would have blabbed sooner or later, and then she would have _killed_ us instead of grounding us."

"I would _not_ blab," Demetrios said furiously, sitting up beside Nico.

"You wouldn't have meant to," Hector said kindly, "but you would have. You know you can't keep a secret."

"I can too!"

"No you can't," Nico contradicted, abruptly switching sides. "What about my present for Ari last Christmas, huh? And that time I skipped school to go to the ball game? You _promised_ to keep those secrets, and you didn't even last twenty-four hours."

"That was different," Demetrios muttered, flopping back down. "Those weren't really important."

"It would have been important if it had been _your_ butt Papa whipped."

"Cut it out," Hector snapped. "It's bad enough being stuck in here without you two arguing…"

Their bedroom door swung open, and Athena's ample figure filled the doorway. "Mrs. Portokalos needs help fixing some things in her apartment. I told her I had three good for nothing boys who should be put to use." She jerked her head toward the front door. "Up, up, go!"

"Me too?" Demetrios asked, slowly following his brothers. Privately, he was convinced that Mrs. Portokalos was a witch – she had a black cat and an enormous mole on her nose, and she had once put a spell on him to make his stomach hurt after he had accidentally knocked down her potted begonia with his baseball.

"Yes, you too." Athena swatted his bottom as he passed her. "Move a little faster than a turtle, why don't you?"

When they descended the one flight of steps to Mrs. Portokalos' apartment, they found the door standing open and a musty, damp smell drifting out. Hector knocked on the wood. "Mrs. Portokalos?" he called.

There was a shuffling, and a stooped woman came out of the kitchen. "Hello boys," she greeted in a quavering voice. "It's so nice of your mother to lend you to me. I hope I'm not keeping you from anything fun."

"Uh, no ma'am," Hector said politely and truthfully. "What would you like us to do first?"

She craned her neck back and cackled up at him. "You're almost as tall as your father, aren't you? Why don't you put those long arms to use and change some light bulbs? I think they're about all burned out." She pointed at a step stool and a pile of boxes. "You two come with me," she told the younger boys.

Demetrios stuck so close to Nicolai that he treaded on his heels and got himself glared at.

In the kitchen, Mrs. Portokalos handed Nico a screwdriver. "You know how to use this?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"All the cupboard doors are coming loose. I don't have much of a grip myself, anymore." She held out her crooked fingers. "Arthritis. Now you," she put her shriveled hand on Demetrios' shoulder, causing his heart to stop in his chest. "Come with me."

Was she still angry with him about the baseball? Did she have some even worse curse in store for him? He wanted to run out the door, screaming, but instead he wordlessly followed her to the back of the apartment and into the room that was his bedroom at home. There was no door in the wooden frame, and the room beyond was filled with rows and rows of shelves. Neatly lining the shelves were hundreds of glass jars, each holding a peculiar substance. He froze in the doorway, unable to take another step.

Mrs. Portokalos looked back at him curiously. "What's wrong, boy? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Are those for your spells?" Demetrios asked faintly.

She peered at him and then at the shelves. "Of course!" she cackled. "Dragon's blood and lizard's tails and dog's eyeballs. I can't abide dogs," she said confidentially, leaning on her cane.

"Oh," was all he could say.

She nodded her head full of wispy hair. "There's nothing like a jarful of dog's eyeballs to whip up a good curse. But don't worry, boy, I won't be cursing you today. Not unless you've been throwing balls at my windows again." She looked at him severely.

"No, ma'am!" he exclaimed. "No ma'am, no balls."

"Good." She picked up an empty ice cream bucket and handed it to him. "Bastet decided to climb my bead curtain the other day. Broke all the strands. There must be a million beads rolling around this floor." She repeated her severe look. "Mind you get them all. The last thing I need is to slip on a bead and break my hip."

"Yes, Mrs. Portokalos," he promised, fervently, and sighed in relief as she hobbled back out of the room. He dropped to his knees and began scooping up beads, convinced his life depended on it.

The bottom of his bucket was well covered when she hobbled back into the room. He scrambled back from where he had been peering at a section of jars full of yellow spheres floating in a thick syrup – he was pretty sure they were eyeballs.

"Don't you go touching those," she warned. "You don't know what nasty things might happen to you if you fool with a witch's spell supplies."

"Oh no, I wouldn't…I wouldn't!" he gasped.

"Hmmmph. Well, you'd better have a cookie. Give your eyes strength to help find those beads."

He looked nervously at the plate she held out to him. "Umm…"

She gave another of her dry little laughs. "Don't worry. Only normal ingredients in these, no magical ones."

He took the smallest cookie and, since she kept staring at him, took a small nibble off the edge. It _tasted_ all right. Braver, he took another bite and another until it was gone. "Have the rest," Mrs. Portokalos urged, shoving the plate into his hand. She hobbled over and sank into a chair.

Demetrios sat down on the floor and ate another cookie. His crunching sounded loud in the silence, and he felt as though he ought to try and make conversation. "Have you been a witch for long?" he asked, in his best polite voice.

"Oh yes, since I was born. Every girl in my family is, you know."

Demetrios ate another cookie. "I suppose you've cast a lot of spells."

"Not as many as you might think. It doesn't do to be always interfering. That's the worst of some witches – always poking their noses into other people's business. I only do it when it's warranted."

He was wasn't sure what 'warranted' meant, but he nodded politely and bit into the last cookie. "Have you cast any spells on me?" he asked suddenly. "Besides the one after I, er…"

"After you knocked over my begonia? You figured out that was me, did you?"

He nodded fervently. "Yes, ma'am. I've never had such an awful stomachache."

"Well, I hope you learned something from it."

"I did," he assured her hastily.

"Hmmph. Seems there's hope for the younger generation yet." Moving slowly and leaning heavily on her cane, she pushed herself up from her chair. "Get back to those beads, young man. I'm going to check on your brothers."

He felt as though he had picked up thousands of beads before she hobbled in again and peered into his bucket. "That's enough," she said abruptly.

Relieved because his knees were beginning to ache, he stood up and handed her the bucket. She looked at it and sighed. "Even if I could get them restrung, I don't dare put them back up. Darn cat shreds all my curtains."

Nico's voice called, "Hey Demetrios! We're going to the store to buy some more light bulbs."

She pointed her nose with its enormous mole toward the door. "Go on, they're waiting for you."

"Thank you, Mrs. Portokalos," he said gratefully, and bolted.

In the cool interior of Sims, Hector pulled a bill out of his pocket. "Mrs. Portokalos gave us five dollars to get some ice cream or something, so you guys choose what you want." He went down the aisle to find the light bulbs, and Nico peered through the glass cover of the ice cream case.

Demetrios wandered over to the candy display and deliberated between bubble tape and pop rocks. _She's really not so bad, for a witch,_ he mused as he noticed a dusty string of plastic packages hanging from the edge of the shelf. _Make your own stained glass! Turn a boring window into a rainbow of colors!_ the printing on the packages proclaimed. They held plastic sun catchers in a variety of designs and little of tubs of paint. Demetrios found one with a cat and a butterfly on it and pulled it off the string.

"I want this," he told his brothers.

Hector took it and looked at the price. "Three dollars? That's more than your share." He handed it back.

"I know, but pleeease?"

"Why do you want that stupid thing anyway?" Nico demanded.

"For Mrs. Portokalos. She can't put curtains on her windows because the cat rips them up. And I need her to like me, so she won't curse me again." True, she had apparently forgiven him for the begonia thing, but it didn't hurt to rack up extra points with a witch.

Nico rolled his eyes. "She did not curse you."

"She did too! She told me so herself."

Nico and Hector exchanged glances, and then Hector threw his ice cream bar back in the freezer. "He can have my part of the money."

"You always baby him!"

"I am the baby," Demetrios said sweetly. "Thank you, Hector."

Nico heaved a disgusted sigh and put back his own ice cream. "You can have a dollar," he told his older brother.

"No, it's ok, I don't want anything."

"If you won't get anything, then I won't get anything."

Hector groaned. "Why do you have to make everything so difficult?"

"_I'm _difficult? _Demetrios_ is difficult!"

Finally back at home, Demetrios sat down on his bedroom floor and tore open the package. The cat should be black like Bastet, he decided, and filled that part in first. Ariadne stuck her head through the door and wrinkled her nose at the acrid smell of the paint. "What are you doing?"

"Painting." Demetrios explained about the cat and the curtains.

Ariadne sat down on the floor next to him. "That's a good idea. Hey!" She perked up with excitement. "You know what you should do instead of giving it to her? You should climb down the fire escape when she's asleep and hang it on the outside of her window. Then she'll be surprised when she wakes up in the morning. She won't know who did it!"

Demetrios hesitated. The whole point was to get on Mrs. Portokalos' good side. On the other hand, she was a witch so she could probably figure it out. Besides, the element of mystery appealed to him.

"Demetrios isn't allowed on the fire escape," said Nico who had entered in time to hear Ariadne's plan. "And if he goes I'll tell Mama." Nico was still irritated over the drugstore money.

"What are you going to tell Mama?" Hector asked, coming in behind him.

Demetrios gave his biggest brother his most appealing look. "Hector, will you climb down the fire escape tonight and put this on Mrs. Portokalos' window?"

"Why, so she'll think Santa Claus left it or something?"

Ariadne giggled. "Maybe she'll think the Batman left it!"

Nico groaned. "The Batman is way too cool to go around leaving stupid pictures on people's windows."

"How do you know?" Ariadne asked haughtily. "I bet he does nice things for people all the time, and they never even guess."

"Whatever." Unable to tolerate the stupidity of his younger siblings anymore, Nico left.

"Please Hector?" Demetrios pleaded.

"All right, I'll do it. But no more favors for a week!"

* * *

Bruce settled back in his chair, never taking his eyes off Alex Peaceable. Since the Miss Tracy fiasco, he had made a point of sitting on at least one tutoring session every two weeks. Some of the tutors were extremely nervous in his presence – stumbling over their words and dropping things. Others succeeded in at least pretending to ignore him, although they gave themselves away by never looking in his direction. It was apparent that Peaceable would rather not have Bruce there, but he didn't let his employer's presence fluster him. Nor did he make much attempt to conceal the dislike that flitted across his features whenever his eyes lighted on the visitor. Bruce often wondered whether Peaceable simply thought him completely oblivious or whether he thought that as long as he stayed on Alfred's good side his job was secure.

"Did you complete the reading?" the tutor was asking now, flipping the geography textbook open to the appropriate chapter.

Dick shrugged. "Some of it."

"Complete means all. Therefore, your answer should be no."

"Ok. No."

Peaceable casually ran his finger down the page. "What's the capital of South Africa?"

"Uh…" Dick squinted up at the ceiling in thought. "South Africa City?"

"Nice try. Mr. Wayne, perhaps you could enlighten your ward?" Peaceable's expression was politely inquiring, but Bruce thought he detected a gleam of malice in the educator's eyes.

_He's trying to humiliate me in front of Dick._ Anger momentarily clouded his judgment and he snapped, "Pretoria." _Idiot_, he immediately reprimanded himself. _You are supposed to be modeling self control here._ "The Waynes used to have diamond interests in South Africa," he added with an ingratiating smile.

"Yes, I suppose diamonds would make it worth remembering."

On the surface, it was an innocuous remark, but Bruce thought he detected a sneer behind it that said the playboy couldn't possibly remember a simple fact unless it was directly related to his precious billions. His temper got the better of him again, and he glanced at his watch, affecting concern. "Dick, we've got to go, we're going to be late for your doctor's appointment."

Dick looked over at him, surprised.

"Don't tell me you've forgotten! You were groaning about it all yesterday."

"Doctor's appointment?" Peaceable asked politely.

"Yeah, we think he's got some kind of bug. Needs a good antibiotic to clear it out. Didn't Alfred tell you?"

"No, he must have forgotten to mention it."

Bruce shrugged. "We hate to think about it, but he is getting old. Come on, kid, let's go."

Peaceable rose with them. "Why don't I wait until Dick comes back? After having missed all day yesterday, I'd hate for him to fall even farther behind."

Bruce tried not to glare. "You might have to wait awhile. You know how these doctors are."

"That's all right. I've got plenty of work to do right here."

"Suit yourself."

Dick stayed quiet until they were shut up in the study. "I don't have a doctor's appointment."

"No."

"Where are we really going?"

Bruce threw himself into one of the deep leather chairs. "I don't know."

"You made up a doctor's appointment to pull me out of lessons without a reason?"

"That sounds about right." A slow smile spread across Bruce's face. "I'm trying to be sorry."

Dick looked at him suspiciously. "Why?"

"That was a terrible thing to do – using you to get in a dig at Peaceable, disrupting your learning process for my own selfish purposes."

The boy sat down and surveyed his guardian with interest. "I don't think I've ever seen you do a terrible thing before."

"You've been sheltered," Bruce replied, only half joking. "Alfred's going to kill me."

"What do you mean Alfred? _I_ should kill you," Dick said indignantly.

Bruce's eyebrows shot up. "Oh yeah?"

"Using me, disrupting my learning process… This could upset my academic progress for years!"

Bruce caught on. "All right, Grayson, what do you want?"

"Paintball," Dick responded promptly. "In the orchard."

"Tonight?"

"Now."

"What if Peaceable sees us?"

"The schoolroom's on the other side of the house," Dick pointed out. "And we'll stay on the far side of the orchard."

Bruce considered, then grinned. "You're going down, Grayson!"

Dick shook his head. "No way. Not this time!"

* * *

Alex marched angrily back and forth behind his desk. He wasn't stupid - he knew Dick didn't have a doctor's appointment. But without calling Wayne a liar to his face, there hadn't been anything he could do to stop them from leaving. The only real weapon in his power was to threaten resignation, but he was saving that as a last resort since Wayne might just decide to take him up on it.

It would be hours before they returned, and Wayne would no doubt have some cock and bull story about a traffic jam, or an emergency at the doctor's office, or an Alien invasion of the train system. Alex slammed his fist down on his desk, then forced himself to draw a deep breath. He needed to calm down. Losing his temper was the absolute worst way to deal with the situation. Maybe a walk would help. Grabbing his light jacket as protection against the early fall coolness, he headed outside.

He wandered the garden paths by the house for a while, and then headed deeper into the grounds. He had to admit that the estate was truly beautiful, and the bright sun and tasteful landscaping were having a soothing effect on his nerves. As he approached the orchard he heard a faint popping sound. Curious about what the gardeners might be doing, he continued forward until he stood beneath the trees. He peered around, but the dappled shade confused his eyes, and first he couldn't see anyone. He nearly jumped in shock, when he finally discovered the motionless figure ten feet away. The man had on a camouflage jacket and head gear that looked like it had come out of Star Wars. His hands cradled a piece of machinery that looked decidedly deadly, and its muzzled was pointed at Alex's heart.

_No, he wouldn't…_ Alex stumbled back from the impact, his chest stinging as orange dye soaked into his shirt front. By the time he had regained his balance, Wayne was gone. _That's it. That's _it_!_ He spun on his heel and raced out of the orchard. Back in the house, he darted into the kitchen and collapsed against the counter, chest heaving.

The butler, unperturbed as always, hung up the telephone. "May I assist you in any way, sir?"

"Alfred, where's the arsenal?"

* * *

_I shouldn't have done that_, Bruce told himself firmly for the umpteenth time as he crouched behind a tree, trying to figure out where Dick had disappeared to. His mental scolding was making no impression on his inner glee. There he had stood, a loaded marker in hand, Peaceable facing him with his white shirt front gleaming in the sun… It had been much too much to resist.

There was a crackling from some branches off to the right, and he immediately dropped to his belly and began wiggling forward over the grass. _I bet he's trying to ambush me. He never makes that much noise._ Convinced that he was right, he took a roundabout route toward the noise, scanning trees and ground carefully. At last he approached the mysteriously rustling tree, trying to squint up through the thick foliage to spot his ward. Inch by inch, he worked his way toward the base of the trunk, determined to get a clear shot.

So intent was he on the rustling tree that he when his hand came down on top of somebody else's, he was momentarily inactive with surprise. He dumbfounded at Dick, who was looking back with equal surprise, but before they could do more than stare, they were pelted with a barrage of shots from above.

"Ambush!" screamed Dick, as they frantically rolled out of range behind a neighboring tree.

Bruce dropped to ground and maneuvered so that he could get a good shot at the unfriendly tree without leaving himself open. "Let's find out who decided to play. On three. One, two…" Together, they furiously pumped shots at the tree, spattering its deep green leaves with a lurid display of blue and orange. A moment later, a lithe black man bounded out of the tree and darted for better cover.

"It's Al…" Dick cut his explanation short at the same moment Bruce felt something hard dig into the small of his back.

"Gentlemen, I suggest you drop your weapons."

Bruce craned his neck around to see Alfred gripping two long-muzzled markers, also holding Dick hostage. "A double agent," Bruce said darkly, tossing his marker out in front of him. Dick did the same.

"Now, put your hands behind your heads and get up slowly."

As they obeyed, Peaceable reemerged, sauntering forward with his rifle trained on Bruce. "Well, well, it would seem that the doctor's office has moved to a very convenient location."

Bruce gave an awkward shrug, his hands still behind his head in surrender. "Our old and trusted family physician, Dr. Hooky. He makes house calls."

"How very nice for you." Peaceable raised his marker slightly.

_He wouldn't…_ Three stinging rounds exploded against Bruce's chest. _He would._ The billionaire staggered and groaned, then fell to the ground in a dramatic death pose.

He heard footsteps and then felt Peaceable's toe nudging him gently. He obligingly rolled over to display his death wounds. "You know Peaceable, you would have made a good Nazi."

"I do my best," the tutor returned modestly, then turned his attention to his next victim. "Sergeant Pennyworth, I'll be taking charge of this prisoner."

"Very good, sir." Alfred stepped aside and let Peaceable take up the guard position. "All right, you," the tutor growled at his wayward pupil. "March!"

As Dick left at a rapid pace encouraged by the muzzle of Alex's marker, Bruce sat up and pulled off his head gear. "Who'd have thought prickly Peaceable had it in him?"

"I believe you underestimate him, sir."

"You mean _he_ underestimates _me._"

Alfred looked down at him thoughtfully. "It really bothers you that he doesn't like you."

"Why should it?" Bruce pushed himself to his feet. "Good people usually disapprove of me. I'm used to it."

"You've been encouraging him in his opinions since the day he started working here."

"Or maybe I've given him a fabulous job with a great kid, a generous salary, and very little interference. People see what they expect to see, no matter how good they are." The billionaire shook his head dismissively and draped an arm around his butler's shoulders. "Now, about this little matter of your sedition…"

* * *

The news that LexCorp had purchased the Deep Harbor Casino hit the GCPD like a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky.

"Why did the _Globe_ know about this before we did?" Gordon furiously demanded, throwing down the early edition in front of O'Hara, who had been put in charge of the robbery investigation.

The portly captain looked woeful. "I don't know! We knew the owners had received several offers, but none of them was LexCorp."

"LexCorp," Gordon muttered dourly, glaring at the _Globe's_ headline: **LexCorp fishes Deep Harbor out of deep trouble**. "What of kind of presence do they already have in Gotham?"

O'Hara shook his head helplessly. "Not much. I mean, they've got fingers in a lot of pies, mostly chain businesses, but they're not moguls here. Gotham is Enterprises territory."

"We may be on the verge of a territorial war," Gordon predicted darkly.

O'Hara snapped his fingers. "Hey! One thing LexCorp does outright own are the Bobo's Galleries of Fun."

"Sort of an arcade, kid-friendly restaurant, right?" Gordon asked. "Jimmy went to a birthday party in one last month."

"Yeah. A couple of years ago there was an incident – a manager took a group of kids hostage and ended up shooting himself. No one else was hurt."

Gordon frowned. "I think I remember that. Our precinct didn't handle it."

"No, it came under Precinct 5. Detective Essen was there before she transferred here."

"She in today?"

"Yeah, but she's out right now. Somebody found a body by the docks."

"Send her to me when she gets in, will you?"

Gordon retreated back into his office, his mind filled with the details of the casino case. Five minutes after he had sat down at his desk, his phone rang. It was the commissioner, demanding to know why he hadn't known that LexCorp was planning to purchase Deep Harbor. Gordon spent his day running around, conducting a series of painful interviews, smoothing ruffled feathers, and making promises. When he at last returned to his office, it was dinnertime, and he only intended to pick up a handful of files before running home – almost on time for once. He was surprised to find a faintly familiar blond woman waiting for him outside his office.

She stood up from her chair as he approached. "You wanted to see me, Chief Gordon?"

It took him a moment to figure out who she was. "Yes, Detective Essen. I hope you haven't been waiting long."

She shrugged and held up a clipboard. "I got caught up on some reports."

Gordon led the way into his office and flipped on the lights. "Captain O'Hara tells me you were working in Precinct 5 when the hostage situation at Bobo's happened."

"Yes, I worked on that case."

"Good. What did you find out about LexCorp?"

"Quite a lot, actually. I was curious, so I took advantage of the opportunity to snoop around."

"So this is going to take awhile?"

"If you want the details."

"I do." Gordon paused, thinking. "Is this sensitive stuff, or could we discuss it over dinner?"

She sounded confused. "I…ah…Dinner?"

"I'm starving, and Charlie's down the block serves a decent steak. We could kill two birds with one stone."

"Oh. Sure. I mean, the information's not sensitive," she clarified.

"Great. Just let me get my briefcase together." As they walked down the block to restaurant, Gordon pulled out his cell and hit the speed dial for home. Babs answered. "Hi, Babsie, it's me. I'm not going to make it home for dinner. I've got to meet with a detective."

"Daddy, not again!"

"I know. I'm sorry, but…"

"LexCorp, I know," Babs interrupted.

"How'd you guess that?"

He could hear the tolerance dripping from her tone as she responded, "Daddy, it was in _all_ the papers."

"Right. I'll see you later tonight, ok?"

"Ok. I'll save you a piece of pie."

"Thanks, baby. Bye." He hung up in time to open the door the door for Detective Essen.

She seemed a little startled, but mumbled, "Thanks," as she passed.

They settled at a quiet table in the back, and after they had ordered, Essen began, "The hostages weren't held very long. In fact, I had barely arrived on the scene before it was over. But I was heavily involved in the post investigation – what there was of it."

"What do you mean by that?"

"The guy was dead. His motive seemed clear – he had been caught juggling the books and was about to be fired and prosecuted. While he was holding the kids, he said things about wanting to ruin his superior's life the same way his own had been ruined."

"Any accomplices?"

"Not that we could ever discover. The senior manager was very cooperative, let us have access to employees, the doctored books – everything without a fuss. It seemed like an open and shut deal." Essen paused as the waitress set their plates in front of them.

Gordon cut into his steak and asked, "But you said you got curious. Why?"

"It was something the senior manager said. The perpetrator, his name was Carrisford, had seemed to think that what he did was going to hurt this guy. So I said something about, I hope this doesn't cause trouble for your business. An event like that can really hurt a place, especially if its somewhere that caters to kids."

"Yeah, I can see why."

"But the senior manager wasn't worried. He gave me this funny look – as if I had amused him – and then he said, 'Nothing keeps a LexCorp company down.' And that was when I got curious. I started poking around, trying to find out what I could about LexCorp. The first thing I discovered was that just because you don't hear the name much in Gotham, doesn't mean they're not here."

"O'Hara said something about a lot of fingers in pies."

"That's a good description. They're not whole pies – just pieces, but there's a lot of pieces."

"Like what?"

"The new housing in the Narrows for one. Cisco Banks, Husman's Hardware stores, Gladelands."

"Gladelands?"

"They bought in after Andrew Williams' death."

"Huh." They ate in silence for a while, Gordon pondering the new information. What Essen had related sounded like a creeping invasion – an invasion that had suddenly decided to go public. He swallowed the last bite of his steak and asked, "Was the manager right?"

She frowned. "About what?"

"Do LexCorp companies go down?"

"No," she responded. "They don't. All of the Bobo's, including that one, are up and running. For a year after the incident, it didn't get much business, but you'd never have known it from the way they kept it up. Open all the usual hours, didn't let any employees go…" She shook her head. "They were getting money from somewhere, and it wasn't from customers."

"Do you think they run some kind of side business?"

She shook her head slowly. "Maybe, but…I don't think so. I think some other part of LexCorp funded them until they got back on their feet. But it's not just them. All the businesses LexCorp's got interests in here are growing. They keep opening new branches and none of the old ones shut down. Ever. Even when it seems in their best interest."

"Is it like this everywhere, or just Gotham?"

"I don't know, I…"

His phone rang, and he pulled it out to check the number. The call was from home, and he shot Essen an apologetic smile. "Excuse me." He flipped it open and pushed 'talk.' "Hello?"

"Daddy?" came a voice almost obliterated by static.

He got up from the table and moved over to a window, hoping for a stronger signal. "Babs?"

"Daddy, you need to come home."

She sounded upset, as though she were on the verge of tears. "Babs, what's wrong?"

"It's just…you just need to come home, right now."

Gordon was seriously alarmed. His daughter didn't upset easily, and if she was pleading for his presence then something was very wrong. "All right, sweetheart, I'm on my way. Is anybody hurt?"

"No. Just hurry, ok?" She hung up.

He shoved the phone back in his pocket and grabbed his coat off the back of his chair. "I've got to go."

"Is something wrong?"

"I'm not sure." He fumbled for his wallet. "Do you see our waitress?"

"I'll get the tab," she offered.

"Oh, no, I couldn't let you…"

"Hey, it's not exactly the Ritz. I can handle it. You just go."

He gave in. "Thanks. Turn in the receipt as a business expense. I'll see you tomorrow." Shoving his arms into his coat as he went, he strode quickly to the exit, unaware of the way her gaze followed him out the door.

_To Be Continued_

**A/N** Ooh, a cliffhanger! I don't do this very often, so I expect stiff upper lips! Also, I'm not certain how frequently I'll be able to update in the future. There are two reasons for this. One is that the chapters for this story are insisting on becoming very long – about double the length of what used to be usual. The other is that the heavy duty part of the semester is coming up fast. I'll do my best not to make it too long between updates, but I just can't commit to a steady schedule right now. Remember that lots of thoughtful reviews keep me optimistic and in the mood to write!


	9. Turn for the Worse

**A/N** An update! Yay me! (Let's not talk about the fact that I was supposed to be reading postcolonial theory instead of writing this. I couldn't focus anyway.)

Thank you so much all of you who reviewed, particularly Boleyn who sent me three reviews in one day and was directly responsible for me finishing this chapter.

Chapter 9

**In Which Bruce Expresses an Opinion about Art and Gordon's Affairs Take a Turn for the Worse**

_In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours,  
Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers:  
Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all._

_- Tennyson_

"_Thanks, baby. Bye."_

Babs Gordon hung up the phone and repressed a sigh. Her father was missing dinner for the fourth time that week, thanks to the stupid casino case. Even so, things between her parents had seemed a little calmer lately. There hadn't been a screaming match since the night of the robbery, and even her mother's usual nagging had been absent. _Maybe they've finally worked something out,_ she thought hopefully as she headed slowly to the kitchen. Despite the recent peace, she was still reluctant to break the news.

Barbara was standing in front of the stove, stirring a saucepan full of tomato soup, but she looked over when her daughter entered the kitchen. "Who was on the phone?"

"Dad."

"Skipping dinner?" the older woman asked, almost absently, as she returned her attention to the soup.

"You know how busy this casino case is keeping him," Babs defended, avoiding a direct answer.

"I know," Barbara responded, switching off the burner. "Supper's ready, will you call Jimmy?"

The meal passed peacefully, and if either Babs or her mother were particularly quiet, James Gordon Jr.'s chatter covered it up. Afterward, Babs did the dishes and then went to her room to work on her homework. As she sat at her desk, she could hear Jimmy splashing in the tub, and her mother's voice scolding him. Things quieted down when the bath was over, although Babs mentally followed the routine of brushing teeth and reading a bedtime story.

"Babs! Babsie! I'm going to bed!" Jimmy's voice hollered from his bedroom.

Rolling her eyes, Babs went to perform her part of nighttime ritual. She kissed Jimmy's cheek and rumpled his hair, then waited as her mother turned out the light. Together, the three of them sang

_Sleep my child, and peace attend thee, all through the night.  
Guardian angels God will lend thee, all through the night.  
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping, hill and vale in slumber steeping,  
I my loving vigil keeping, all through the night._

As they left Jimmy in his bed, Barbara laid a hand on her daughter's arm. "Wait for me downstairs. I need to talk to you."

An uneasy feeling blossomed in Babs's chest, but she obediently went downstairs and sat on the sofa. When her mother came down, she was carrying a small brown suitcase, her purse, and her coat. She set down the things and sat next to Babs, then reached over and took her daughter's hands.

_This is going to be bad_.

"Babs, sweetheart, I'm going to visit your grandmother for a few days."

_Cancer_, thought Babs. "Grandma Jane? Is she sick?"

"No, honey, she's fine. I just need to talk to her."

"Now? But why didn't you tell us earlier?"

"Because…" Barbara drew a deep breath. "Babs, I'm leaving your father."

At first the words didn't even make sense. "What?"

"I can't do this anymore. I can't deal with him being only a part-time member of this family." Barbara laughed bitterly. "Sometimes I feel as though he should punch in on a time card whenever he comes through the door."

Panic was beginning to set in. Babs glanced wildly at the suitcase and then back at her mother. "Why are you going to Grandma's?"

"She's going to lend me money to start divorce proceedings. I'll be back at the beginning of next week."

"So you're just leaving … leaving us?" Babs tore her hands from her mother's and jumped up off the sofa. "You're leaving us!"

"No!" Barbara stood up too and grabbed Babs's shoulder, forcing the girl to look at her. "I am not leaving you. You and Jimmy will always live with me – there's no question of that. But I need to see my mother, and if I take you two out of the state, your father could press kidnapping charges."

Babs shook free of her mother's grip. "I can't believe you're just giving up! What about counseling? You haven't even tried counseling!" she shouted.

"Sweetie, please keep your voice down, or you'll wake up Jimmy. He doesn't need to be upset by this."

"Oh, because he's not going to be upset tomorrow when he wakes up and finds you gone?"

"Tell him the truth – that I've gone to visit Grandma, and I'll be back next Monday."

Babs took a deep breath, trying to keep her voice down. "Does Dad know you're…"

"Not yet. I was going to talk to him this evening; however, he is, once again, not around when he's needed."

"He always comes when we really need him!" Babs responded fiercely.

"If he really thought he belonged in this family, he'd be around for more than just emergencies."

Babs ignored her mother's comment and ran toward the phone. "I'll call and he'll come. You'll see."

"Babs…"

She hit speed dial for her father's cell and almost collapsed with relief when his voice, not his voicemail, answered. "Daddy, you need to come home."

"_Babs, what's wrong?"_

"It's just…you just need to come home, right now."

"_All right, sweetheart, I'm on my way. Is anybody hurt?"_

"No. Just hurry, ok?" She hung up and turned triumphantly to her mother. "He's coming!"

Barbara closed her eyes and sighed wearily. "I have to leave, Babs. My taxi will be here any minute." As if in response to her words, the doorbell pealed.

"No," Babs shook her head frantically, trying to repress the sobs choking her throat. "Mom, don't."

"Babs, I have to." Barbara pulled her wooden daughter into her arms and pressed a kiss against her forehead. "I've left a note for your father – you don't have to explain anything. Mrs. Harris is going to pick Jimmy up from kindergarten and take care of him until you get home from school. There's plenty of food in the fridge, ok?"

"No, it's not ok!" Babs shoved her mom away and retreated to the wall, crossing her arms tightly across her chest. "It is _not_ ok!"

The doorbell rang again. "I have to go. I'll see you on Monday. Babs, please, try to understand."

Babs glared at her with all the fury and fear that was coursing through her. "I will _never_ understand."

Barbara's mouth tightened, but she didn't respond. She picked up her suitcase and left.

Babs heard the taxi pull away from the front of the house, and only then did she slump against the wall, both hands clapped against her mouth. She wasn't certain whether she wanted to scream, cry, be sick, or all three, but she would keep whatever it was inside, because her mother had been right about one thing – Jimmy didn't need to be dragged into this. Not yet.

* * *

Bruce abstractedly swirled the champagne in his glass as he stared at the painting hanging on the wall in front of him. The naked figure of a woman was drawn in bold black and tan lines. She was bent backward into an arc, her stomach ripped open and a scarlet fountain shooting out to water the flowering dollar signs that bloomed around her body.

"Do you like it?" a voice at his elbow asked.

"No," Bruce said decidedly, turning to see who had addressed him. The woman beside him was tall and slender; the midnight blue dress that hugged her figure brought out the equally dark blue of her eyes, and highlighted the blue sheen of her glossy black ponytail. Yes, Bruce Wayne would definitely be interested in this one, particularly since Bruce Wayne was notoriously bored by anything considered high culture. He smiled with the easy, boyish charm he was famous for and said, "I don't believe we've met."

"Not with these faces, at least," she responded, smiling a little in return. "But in a previous life, who knows?"

He replied smoothly, "I'm fairly certain you appeared in all of my previous lives." He shifted his glass to his left hand and held out his right. "Bruce Wayne."

"Selina Kyle." Her hand was slender and cool, but strong. "I've been reading a great deal about your philanthropic work, Mr. Wayne."

"Please, call me Bruce."

She acquiesced with a small smile. "This Foundation of yours is really something."

He looked intently into her eyes. "People in … my position … have a great responsibility to give something back to the community."

One delicately shaped eyebrow moved fractionally upward, and she said deliberately, "You mean you buy the city off with one hand so that you can screw it with the other."

He winced. "Does this cynicism carry over from our encounters in previous lives?" He gestured toward the painting with his glass. "Actually, sometimes I think the city's screwing _me_ over. Do you know what the museum paid for this?"

"About ten thousand dollars. And I'm not being cynical, I just understand you. I have great admiration for the way you handle your public image. By judicious applications of cash and apologies you remain likeable enough to get away with murder."

"She says she's not cynical!" Bruce pleaded with the tortured woman in the painting.

Selina laughed lightly. "I work for LexCorp. I'm paid to do exactly the same thing."

"LexCorp? Are you here to do the deal on the casino?" he asked interestedly.

"Actually, no. I've been in the city since before the robbery, checking on some of the company's other investments here. Mr. Luthor also donated a good deal of money to the museum this year, and he asked me to drop by and make certain that people remember that. He also asked me to see if there's anything he should bid on to add to his private collection."

"You're an art critic?"

"Amateur only. I know what Lex likes though." She nodded toward the painting. "He would like this."

Bruce grimaced. "He can have it. A new conversation piece for his dining room, perhaps?"

"Oh no. This would definitely go somewhere in the main office complex. For the irony."

"I think my high school English teacher mentioned the term once."

Her expression became faintly contemptuous, but she explained, "The meaning of the painting is essentially feminist Marxist, saying that women's lives have been sacrificed to the growth of capitalism. So by incorporating this painting into the décor of a building which represents the pinnacle of the capitalist dream, he mocks its philosophy by proving that he can possess it."

"Nice guy you work for," Bruce said dryly.

She shrugged, the smooth skin of her bare shoulders glimmering in the light. "He's Lex Luthor, not Mother Teresa."

Two of the members of the museum's board of directors approached, and they drifted apart. Bruce, however, kept track of her progress through the glittering assembly of art patrons, and when she headed for the exit, he abruptly cut off his conversation with the mayor's wife and hurried after, catching up to her at the coat check.

"Can I give you a lift anywhere?" he asked, taking the heavy silk wrap from her hands and winding it around her shoulders.

"I'm just headed back to my hotel, unless I get a better offer." She met his eyes with a faintly challenging expression.

He sighed inwardly. After his flagrant display of ignorance in front of the painting, he'd expected her to turn him down, after which he could go home. "Consider the offer made." He rested a hand on the small of her back and guided her toward the entrance.

A valet ran off to bring the car around, and Selina tilted her head back, apparently to look at the stars. "Next time you throw a little money at the board of directors," she said absently, "you might request that some of it be spent updating their safety measures. The security in this place is terrible."

Bruce followed her glance upward and saw the camera positioned just above the door. "So you're an expert on security as well as art?"

"I know a little."

The valet pulled the gleaming Saleen up to the curb, and Bruce held open Selina's door while she seated herself. He swapped a tip for his keys, and settled behind the wheel. "Where to?"

She fastened her seatbelt. "Do you dance salsa?"

"Only at gunpoint."

"Then it's fortunate I never leave home unarmed." She made a gun with her fingers and poked his temple. "To the club, James."

They zipped away from the museum and down eight blocks to the heart of the downtown district. The line into Habana Abierta, a club known for its live and hot Latin music, was out the door and halfway down the block, but Bruce sidestepped the crowd and went straight to the door. "Evening, Maurice," he said cheerfully, slipping the man a bill.

"Mr. Wayne, always nice to see you." The bouncer cast an appreciative look at Selina and stepped aside to let them pass.

"If you only dance salsa at gunpoint, then why does the help know you?" Selina asked as they maneuvered through the crowd.

"A lot of people have guns."

They pushed onto the dance floor, not far from the band stand. Bruce unbowed his tie and shoved it into his pocket, then unfastened the button on his collar.

"Feeling overdressed?" she half shouted, in order to be heard over the music.

"No, I just like to breathe while I make a fool of myself," he replied as she began to step to the beat. There was little room for fancy maneuvering on the overcrowded floor, but she made the most of the space they had, twirling beneath his arm as she danced out and back.

"Bruce, you're barely twitching," she accused as she came close and draped her arms over his shoulders. "Is this any way for Gotham's premier playboy to behave?"

"I pay them off so I can do what I like, remember?"

She narrowed her eyes. "You haven't paid _me_ off. Come on." She took his hands and pressed close. "Move with me."

Alfred would gloat, but Bruce had to admit that he was actually having fun. Selina was a refreshing switch from the kind of women he usually ended up with. Flirtatious without throwing herself at him, her cool wit was amusing and relaxing. In fact, for the first time in a long time, he had to stop himself from relaxing too much, from indulging too intelligently in the repartee. And there was no denying that she was attractive. Jaded as he was by constant contact with the elite's "beautiful people," he still found her stunning. He caught himself wondering whether she was going to let him kiss her, and then, as her hip brushed against his, ruefully acknowledged that he wanted to do a lot more than that. He wouldn't, though; he never did. It was too dangerous – his nightlife was practically carved onto his body, not to mention the fact that serious relationships were out of the question. Rachel Dawes had left him a wiser, if sadder, man. Still, it had been five years since he'd even kissed a woman because he wanted to, not because he had to.

They spent the better part of an hour at the club, and then Selina pulled him toward the door. "I have to catch an early flight to Metropolis tomorrow," she explained as they stepped out of the hot air of the club into the much cooler street.

They drove in silence until they reached her hotel. She directed him to a side entrance rather than the main lobby one, and when he got out to open her door, the street was empty. He helped her out, and walked her to the entrance, but caught her wrist before she could slide her keycard through the lock.

"I kiss better than I dance."

"It would be hard not to," she taunted. Nevertheless, she slipped the card back into her bag and wrapped her arms around his neck. "All right, Bruce Wayne. Let's see if you're as good as your reputation."

"I'm usually judged on a scale of one to ten," he murmured, running his hands along the silken skin of her shoulders, absently noting a small scar on one. Her perfume was extraordinarily understated, but at this distance, it was almost overwhelmingly alluring. "Clive Christian?" he guessed.

"You're stalling," she accused.

"I'm savoring the moment. It's not every night I get to kiss an art critic."

"Get on with it, Wayne, my flight leaves…"

He cut her off with his mouth, and despite the surprise, she responded with a smoothness that proved he wasn't the only one with a reputation. She knew how to be subtle, and he couldn't repress a shiver of pleasure as the kiss deepened.

One moment he was in control, on the verge of pulling back. The next, he forgot everything in a fiery wave of desire as her arms suddenly tightened around his neck and her body arched against his. He crushed her against his chest and felt her yield and melt, her demands on his mouth growing increasingly desperate. Triumph flooded through him as he realized that she was his, and he could do anything he liked.

Abruptly, he dropped his arms and stepped back. She didn't protest but stood still, gasping. "That was…unexpected," she murmured, sounding dazed.

_No kidding_. Bruce leaned against the wall of the hotel and tried to steady his own breathing. After a minute, he had regained enough control to ask challengingly, "So. How do I rate?"

She pulled her key out and slid it through the card reader before turning her head to look at him. "Oh, about four and a half." She smiled wickedly. "Good night, Bruce." She opened the door and slipped inside.

"Four and a half," he muttered as he walked back to the car. "Four and a half," he said again as he slipped behind the wheel. "Four and a…" Bruce rested his forehead against the steering wheel and laughed until his sides ached.

As he drove home, he decided that it was a very good thing Selina Kyle was flying back to Metropolis in the morning.

* * *

_Dear James…_

Gordon sat at the kitchen table as he stared down at Barbara's letter. _I should have seen this coming_, he thought bitterly. He should have known that the recent calm was suspicious. But he had never thought she would just walk away without even the decency of telling him to his face. True, she had told Babs that she was coming back next week, but it wouldn't surprise him if she had only said that to calm the girl down. When Gordon had arrived home, he had found his daughter curled up in the corner, weeping wildly but silently. She at last managed to choke out the news, and then she started apologizing as though the whole thing were her fault. _I'm sorry, Daddy, I couldn't stop her, I'm so sorry…_

The thought of her desperation increased Gordon's fury, and he had to force himself to sit still, gripping the edge of the table. Babs had finally dropped into an uneasy sleep out on the couch, and he refused to do anything that would disturb her or distress her further. Her _mother_ had done enough of that. _That bitch_, he labeled her venomously. _Heartless, selfish…_

His pager vibrated against his belt, and he automatically unclipped it and checked the number. It was Detective Essen. _At this time of night? Maybe something on the casino case, I'll have to go in. Who can I get to stay with the kids this time of night? Might have to requisition a sergeant from…_

He froze, suddenly hearing the thoughts that had slipped effortlessly into priority position in his mind. His wife had just left him, and he was already planning to hand his children over to a stranger so that he could go to work. He stared down at the pager as though it had bitten him, then hurled it across the room. It bounced off the wall and skidded under the refrigerator, where he could still hear it buzzing.

Like a deadly landslide, memories of each and every time he had skipped dinner, canceled a family event, or slept in his office at the precinct, began tumbling through his mind. In the beginning, after the advent of the Bat, he had asked Barbara to understand how important this was and promised her that it was only for a while. Just until things got under control. Later, he hadn't even done that much.

He'd been sitting here railing at Barbara for leaving. He should be asking himself why he hadn't given her a reason to stay.

This was his fault, Gordon thought with sickening clarity. He was the one who had fallen down on the job – ironic, for a man who prided himself on his work ethic. And now not only he and Barbara but Babs and Jimmy were going to pay for it.

Filled with the overwhelming need to see his children, he pushed away from the table and walked into the living room. Babs was still dozing, curled up on the couch, her eyelids swollen and the occasional sob catching her breath, even in sleep. Gordon unfolded a blanket and tucked it around his daughter, careful not to wake her. He realized suddenly how grown up she was becoming, and how much she looked like her mother. _I'm sorry, baby_.

Jimmy was fast asleep in his bed, his blankets half kicked off and his head buried beneath a mound of stuffed dinosaurs. Gordon straightened the comforter and removed enough of the animals to create breathing space, then stood looking down at the little boy. The last time they had gone on a family vacation had been that trip to the Caribbean, five years ago, and Jimmy had been the result of that. _Thank God for Bruce Wayne_, Gordon thought suddenly. He couldn't imagine life without his son.

The chief of police stiffened his jaw in determination. He was going to change. It might be too late, but he was going to change anyway. He'd spent the last five years trying to save a city. It was about time he started trying to save his family.

_To Be Continued_

**A/N** Review, review, review! Please, please, please?


	10. The Beating Arms

**A/N** It's been a rough month, but school is almost over!! If I can just survive my two major papers, I'll be alive and well to start back up with a regular update schedule during the summer. Huzzah! Thank you so much all who reviewed. Your words were a tremendous encouragement to me, as always.

Chapter 10

**In Which Dick's Arms Take a Beating**

_Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.  
Don't let 'em pick guitars or drive them old trucks.  
Let 'em be doctors and lawyers and such.  
Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.  
'Cos they'll never stay home and they're always alone.  
Even with someone they love._

_- Ed and Patsy Bruce_

"And by the beginning of next week I want you to have this novel read."

Dick stared at Alex in horror. "You're kidding, right?"

"It's less than a week away. Believe me, it won't kill you."

Dick reluctantly took the paperback and flipped to the end. "A hundred and eighty pages!" he squawked. "No way I can read all that by Monday."

"You'll be surprised at what you can do, Mr. Grayson. Not only can you read that by Monday, but you can write a one page response paper about your favorite character. Go ahead and read the first chapter while I get a cup of coffee."

"At least it's not poetry," Dick muttered, flipping open to page one. "What kind of a stupid title is _The Outsiders_, anyway? What is it about, a bunch of people standing around outside?"

"Read!" Alex commanded from the doorway, and the boy reluctantly bent his head over the book. However, as the tutor had hoped would happen, by the time he returned with a steaming cup of java, Dick was intent on the story, not even glancing up as his teacher reentered the room.

Smiling to himself, Alex settled at his desk. Giving one last satisfied look at his student, his smile abruptly faded to a look of concern. Dick had been wearing a sweater appropriate to the chilly fall day, but he had pulled it off, revealing an ugly bruise that discolored his upper arm. "What did you do to yourself?" Alex demanded.

"Huh?" Dick looked up uncomprehendingly.

"Your arm. It looks like somebody took a hammer to it."

"Oh." An odd expression flashed across the boy's face. Alex's gut reaction was to call it guilt, but that didn't make any sense. The look was gone before he could even formulate the thought, and Dick twisted his arm to peer curiously the discolored skin. "Somebody did take a hammer to it. I had a polo lesson yesterday."

Alex frowned. "You play polo?"

"I take lessons. I'm not very good yet."

"Why polo?" Alex demanded.

Dick shrugged. "I dunno."

"Do you like it?"

Another shrug. "It's ok. Bruce plays."

_Aha_, Alex thought, convinced he had discovered the answer. "You know, you don't have to do everything Bruce does."

Dick looked puzzled. "I don't."

Alex decided not to push his point. "How do you like the book?"

"It's not bad," Dick looked down at the open pages. "This guy really needs to learn how to fight, though, or he's going to get killed."

He settled back down to reading, and Alex tried to focus on his own work, but his eyes kept drifting back to Dick's lurid bruise. He was more disturbed than the situation at face value warranted, but he was convinced that the polo was only a sign of a very real problem that would someday land Dick in serious trouble. _If Wayne won't take responsibility for his influence over the boy…_

When Dick's lessons were over, Alex dismissed him and gathered up papers and books into his satchel. On his way to the front door, he ran into Bruce Wayne, who was also headed out. Alfred held the door for them both, and Wayne stopped to have a word with the butler. Alex trotted down the steps, then hesitated at the bottom and turned to wait for his employer. "Do you have a minute?" he asked as Wayne ran down the steps and started for his car.

The billionaire turned. "Sure."

"I saw Dick's bruise from his polo lesson. The one on his arm," Alex clarified, even though he didn't know how such an ugly injury could be confused with anything else.

Wayne looked at him with a blank expression and pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his shirt pocket. "And?" he inquired, hiding his eyes behind the dark lenses.

"I didn't know he played polo."

"He picked it up a month or so ago. Not competitively – just lessons once a week at the country club."

"I asked him if he liked it, and his answer was that you played."

Wayne tilted his head. "I'm not following you."

Alex repressed a frustrated sigh. "The point I'm trying to make is that the boy's playing this hazardous sport for no other apparent reason than that you do it. I just wanted you to be aware of that. There are more dangerous things than polo, you know."

"I see." Wayne reached up and slowly drew his sunglasses back off. His bright blue eyes bored into Alex's. "Mr. Peaceable," he said softly, "I realize I am a person of little importance in your eyes, but allow me to suggest that if you enjoy tutoring Richard, you should stick to science." With a nod of farewell, he strode to his car.

Alex watched his employer climb in and pull away from the curb, and suddenly realized that he was tense and sweating, despite the coolness of the day. _This is ridiculous_, he told himself firmly. _I am not afraid of Bruce Wayne_. The other man, after all, hadn't so much as raised his voice.

For some reason, Alex couldn't help remembering a long ago visit to the zoo, when he had come face to face with a panther. He had remained eye locked with the beast in an anguished eternity of waiting for it to spring on him, before he finally realized that a Plexiglas wall stood firmly between himself and his killer.

* * *

Dick was sprawled on his bed, plugging away at his assigned reading, when Alfred knocked on his door. "Come in," Dick called, not taking his eyes off the page where some rich jerk had just gotten a knife in the ribs.

"Master Dick, Master Wayne would like to see you downstairs."

"All right," Dick said absently, rushing to reach the end of the paragraph. "Where is he?"

"Downstairs," the butler repeated.

Dick's head jerked up and he stared at Alfred, then shot off his bed and down the hall. The butler followed calmly, and halfway down the stairs found a sheepish Dick waiting for him. "I, um, I don't know how…"

"I've been instructed to teach you." Alfred led Dick into the study and demonstrated the way to open the bust of Shakespeare and flip the switch to swing the bookshelves outward. The liquor cabinet was still the double blind behind the shelves, and Alfred also demonstrated the way to open the hidden door to the elevator. "Nevertheless, I wouldn't come down without an invitation," he cautioned as they rode down.

"I'm not stupid," Dick muttered, a little awed by their descent through the dark shaft. The lights were on below, however, and Bruce was waiting for them, suited minus his cowl, as they pulled up the grille and stepped into the caverns.

"Change," he ordered, thrusting a pile of black clothing at Dick. The boy scrambled to obey, while Alfred backed toward the cave wall where he could watch and listen. When Dick was clad in black from ski mask to sneakers, Bruce beckoned him over to a counter and showed him a superfine mini-net of wires, with a tiny knob in the center like a spider on her web. "This is a listening device. The metallic threads on the edge help it cling to any textured surface," Bruce explained, picking it up with a tiny pair of tweezers and laying it on Dick's shoulder as a demonstration.

Dick peered at it curiously. "How do you get it back off?"

"With this." Bruce picked up a slender black bar and held it over the device. The net leaped up off of Dick's sweatshirt and clung to the bar. "It's got a specially calibrated electromagnetic pulse. You switch it on and off on the side." He gently placed the net in a thin plastic case, then handed case, tweezers, and magnet to Dick. "Put these in your pockets." Dick obeyed, sticking the tweezers and magnet on one side and the listening device in the other. "Let's go," Bruce ordered, snatching up his cowl and leading the way to a small car with tinted windows. They drove through the waterfall, leaving Alfred alone in the caverns.

"Where are we going?" Dick asked as they sped through the downtown district of Gotham.

"To plant that thing," Bruce, or rather Batman, responded.

"Yeah, but where?"

"In the apartment of a mistress of a city councilmember. We suspect that he's a silent partner in a number of illegal businesses, but we can't prove anything. We're hoping for some ideas of where to go for evidence."

"Who's we?"

Batman didn't respond.

Dick's private guess was the chief of police, but he figured he'd reached the limit of how many questions he was allowed to ask, at least for the moment.

They parked the car in one of the better sections of Gotham and hiked the rest of the way to the condominium complex.

"This is her bathroom window," Batman growled when they were pressed against the wall of the building.

Dick looked up at the small pane of frosted glass that glimmered three feet above his head. _What good is that going to do us?_

"The hallway outside the bathroom opens into the living room. There's a coffee table with a table cloth over it. Put the bug on the middle of the table top under the cloth and come straight back out. Understood?"

Dick's mind scrambled to process the fact that he had just been told to break and enter someone's house alone, and then he realized it wasn't all that different from what he'd done the last time with Batman…Bruce. "Ok," he said softly. If Batman ordered him to climb through windows, then he would climb through windows, no questions asked.

"The apartment should be empty. If anything goes wrong, head for the kitchen, which is across from the living room. There's a side door with a glass upper half. Going through that will set off the burglar alarm."

"How do I get through the window?"

"It swivels in the center. You'll sit on my shoulders and cut through the pins. We'll replace them when you come out."

Dick nodded, and took the extremely thin file Batman handed him. The taller man crouched, and Dick climbed up and was raised to the window, which was conveniently open a crack. Either the file was an extremely good one or the condo's building materials were shoddy, because it only took a couple of swipes to cut through the supporting pin on each side. Dick tucked the file into his pocket and carefully handed down the framed glass, then hoisted himself around on the Bat's shoulders so that he could go through the window feet first. He landed lightly on the back of the toilet, straddling a potpourri basket, and jumped soundlessly to the floor. The door to the hall stood open, and there was no light or sound coming from the rest of the apartment.

It was almost ridiculously easy. The coffee table was littered with magazines, some of which he had to shift before he could plant the bug. He took a minute to rearrange everything in its original position, and then silently went back down the hall and out the bathroom window. He again settled onto Batman's shoulders, accepting the window glass and a new set of spring loaded pins. He fit the frame back into place with a feeling of satisfaction: Unless someone else took the window apart, it was impossible to tell that it had been tampered with.

Batman led the way back to their car. "What now?" Dick asked as they buckled their seatbelts.

"Home."

It hadn't been much of an adventure, but Dick didn't mind. The point was that he'd done something to help.

It was nearly midnight, and the highway was almost deserted as they traveled homeward. Suddenly, an SUV shot from behind them, weaving unsteadily between its lane lines. They watched it until it disappeared around a curve, and then Batman said, in a voice that was mostly Bruce but had just enough of the Bat to be scary, "If I ever catch you driving under the influence, I'll break your wrists."

Before Dick could reply, a horrific sound of squealing brakes and crashing metal split the night. Batman hit the gas and they sped around the curve to see the SUV flipped over on its top and a tiny Ford Focus with its nose crumpled against the safety barrier. Batman pulled the car onto the shoulder and hit the brakes, his door flung open almost before the car stopped moving. He ran to the Focus, which was closer.

"Watch the gas tank!" he shouted as Dick ran past him toward the other car.

The SUV reeked of gasoline, and the tank was clearly punctured, judging by the pool of clear liquid that was pooling along one side. Dick didn't know if this was a model with an extra gas tank, but even if not, there was probably gas leaking on the inside as well as the outside, trickling down into the engine and transforming the car into a bomb.

The front passenger's window had shattered and the frame was bent down around it, but there was just enough of a gap to crawl beneath the vehicle. Dick dropped to his stomach and wiggled in. "Hello?" he asked into the darkness. He could make out the figure of a man suspended upside down in the driver's seat by his seatbelt.

"Can you hear me?" Dick asked, wiggling closer and feeling debris shift beneath him. When he got close enough, he put out a hand and felt beneath the man's ear. There was a pulse, fast erratic, fluttering beneath his fingertips. "Ok, let's get out of here," Dick muttered, fumbling for the seatbelt button. It was jammed.

"Shit," Dick muttered, figuring that Alfred would forgive him under the circumstances. He doubted whether a shard of glass would be strong enough to cut through the belt and it might take too long to call Batman for help. Besides, he was probably needed at the other car.

Suddenly Dick remembered the file he had shoved in his pocket after removing the window. He had just maneuvered the tool out of his pocket when a harsh voice outside the car demanded, "Is anyone alive in there?"

"He's alive but his seatbelt's jammed," Dick called. "I'm cutting him loose." He began sawing at the belt. The file didn't cut fabric as well as metal, but he was nearly through when a small explosion shook the SUV's frame.

"The engine's on fire!" Batman shouted. "Get out, now!"

Dick gave a final, frantic tug on the file and the seatbelt snapped, releasing the man's body. "I've got him!" he screamed. "Pull me out!"

Hard hands latched onto his ankles, and he was hauled forcefully out of the vehicle, dragging the driver. But when the man's shoulders hit the opening, he stuck.

"He's too big," Dick gasped, tugging uselessly.

Batman placed his shoulder against the car and grabbed hold of the twisted doorframe. "On three," he gritted. "One, two…" He heaved, and the SUV rose a few precious inches. Dick dug in his heels and jerked. The driver's body slid out from beneath the vehicle and Batman dropped it with a crash. He threw the driver over his shoulder and then they were running, running as a boom shook the air and heat pelted their backs while debris rained down around them.

When they were a safe distance away, Batman dropped the driver unceremoniously to the ground. "You all right?" he demanded.

"Yeah, I'm ok." Dick dropped to his knees and peered at the driver's face. The guy was really young – probably not more than sixteen or seventeen – and the smell of alcohol mixed with the gas fumes drifting up from his body. "What about him?"

"I think he's all right," Batman muttered, crouching and giving the guy a quick once over.

There was the sound of squealing breaks, and then an older woman with styled gray hair and a pink sweater was hurrying over to them. "Oh my goodness, is there anything I can do to help?" she asked, panting. Batman looked up at her, and she let out a surprised squeak.

"Do you have a cell phone?" the crime fighter rasped.

"Yes, yes, I do. Oh my, are you…"

"Call 911." Batman grabbed Dick's arm and they took off toward their car.

"Wait!" the woman called after them. "What do I tell the police?"

Batman ignored her, so Dick did the same. She was still waving frantically as they sped past her. "What about the other car?" Dick asked.

The Bat shook his head. "Dead."

Alfred was waiting for them back at the cave. "Did everything go as planned?" he asked as they climbed out, and then wrinkled his nose. "Smoke?"

"Car accident," Bruce said briefly, pulling off his cowl and unfastening his cape. "You sure you didn't get cut on any of that glass?" he asked Dick, who was pulling off his ski mask.

Dick ran a hand through his sweaty hair and flinched at the dart of pain that ran up his arm. "I guess I did," he answered, looking at the blood visible in a rip in his sweatshirt sleeve.

Alfred sighed. "I see that I'm going to have to lay in more hydrogen peroxide. Come along, young master."

Dick manfully endured Alfred's disinfecting and bandaging while Bruce stood over them, scowling. "You sure that's the only place you got cut?" he demanded.

It was Dick's turn to sigh. "Yes, Master Wayne."

Bruce thumped his ward on the side of the head and began to unstrap his armor.

"Will you not be going out again, Master Wayne?" the butler asked as he trimmed the adhesive tape and gathered up the medical supplies.

"Not tonight. Dick, do me a favor and don't let Peaceable see that arm. He was on me about your polo bruise."

"Polo bruise?" Alfred asked, a touch of worry in his voice.

Dick rolled his eyes. "Yeah, some dumb girl whacked me with her mallet."

"Don't worry, Alfred. _I _only hit him where it doesn't show," Bruce put in smoothly.

Dick looked at his guardian in surprise, but when he caught the hint of a smile, he burst out laughing. "Heck _yes _you do!"

"I fail to understand the joke," Alfred said stiffly, walking over to the supply cabinet.

Dick started laughing even harder and leaned against the counter to support himself, forgetting about his arm. "Ouch!"

"Go to bed," Bruce ordered. "You have school in the morning. I didn't intend to keep you out this late."

"All right," Dick agreed, heading for the elevator. He stopped when a hand grasped his shoulder.

"You did a good job tonight," Bruce said, his grip tightening momentarily. Then he dropped his hand and went to put away his armor.

Dick's grin lasted all the way up to the third floor.

* * *

The moment his ward was out of sight, Bruce darted to the sink and threw up. "I can't do this Alfred," he gasped, sinking to the ground and resting his head against the side of the counter. "He was almost killed tonight and we weren't even fighting crime."

Alfred handed him a towel and a glass of water. "When Master Dick finds people who need rescuing, he'll help them, no matter what career path he's chosen."

"If he hadn't been out with me…"

"If I may bring up the past for a moment, trips to the dentist have proven quite as hazardous for Master Dick as traveling with you."

Bruce shuddered at the memory. "If it hadn't been for that Somerville woman…"

They were silent for a moment, remembering, and then Bruce gave a deep sigh. "Alfred?"

"Yes, Master Wayne?"

"Do you have any tranquilizers in that cupboard of yours?"

* * *

Despite his physical weariness, Dick was much too keyed up to sleep. After pacing around his room for a while, he dropped on to his bed and picked up _The Outsiders_. At first the words seemed pale in comparison to the experiences he had just lived through, but after a few minutes, the narrative drew him in.

"_Nature's first green is gold,  
Her hardest hue to hold.  
Her early leaf's a flower;  
But only so an hour.  
Then leaf subsides to leaf.  
So Eden sank to grief,  
So dawn goes down to day.  
Nothing gold can stay."_

_Johnny was staring at me. "Where'd you learn that? That was what I meant."_

"_Robert Frost wrote it."_

Dick sat bolt upright on his bed. "That sneak!" he cried indignantly. "He gave me a story with _poetry_ in it!"

_To Be Continued_

**A/N** Good news! I think this story is within five chapters of being done and maybe less! We're two thirds of the way there! Then we can move on to the sequel, which is when things get really good. bounces up and down excitedly

In other news, I've started a fic for _The Outsiders_. Check it out if you're a Ponyboy fan, and _especially_ if you're a Darry fan ;)


	11. Monday

**A/N** Yay! One of more week of school! And my projects are going well! I actually have time to write fanfiction in the midst of it all!

**Disclaimer** I cannot be held responsible for any hatred toward Monday which may develop as a result of reading this chapter.

Chapter 10

**In Which Bad Things Happen on Monday**

_There isn't a Monday that would not cede its place to Tuesday._

_- Anton Chekhov_

It was around five o'clock Monday morning when Alfred was awakened by the continuous ringing of the intercom. Climbing out of bed, he checked the light board and found that the summons had come from the poolroom. Pulling on his dressing gown over his pajamas and shoving his feet into his slippers, he made his way calmly but quickly through the Manor halls. The door to the pool stood open, although the room behind it was lit only with the usual security lights. Inside, a most peculiar sight met the butler's gaze.

Bruce stood on an upended plant pot which was balanced on a chair which was placed on a small, glass topped table. The object of this, apparently, was to allow him to reach a cable from which a number of plants were suspended. Bruce was carefully hanging various articles of sopping wet clothing over the line.

"Master Wayne?" Alfred called.

Bruce ignored him, busily adjusting a pair of boxers that were dripping into a pot of alyssum.

Alfred walked closer. "Master Wayne, what are you doing?"

Bruce looked down at him, or rather, down past him, his gaze vague and unfocused. "Today is Monday," he announced, and returned his attention to a pair of mismatched socks.

"Yes, of course." The butler took another step forward as the pot and chair arrangement tilted dangerously. "I've got another load of laundry upstairs. Why don't you come down and we'll go up and get it?"

Bruce hung his last sock and jumped gracefully to the floor. Without a word, he walked past Alfred and out of the room. By the time the butler caught up with him, he was lying face down on his bed, as soundly asleep as he had been during the entire episode.

Alfred pulled the blankets over his employer and went back down to the poolroom. He shook his head mournfully over the aspidistra that had been heartlessly evicted from its pot and used a stepladder to remove the laundry from the cable. "Today is Monday," he muttered, lifting a very small orchid that had been arbitrarily set on top of the intercom switch. "Monday, washday."

If a man with a dangerous double life was going to sleepwalk, then surely washing clothes was one of the least distressing things he might do. Nevertheless, Alfred resolved to begin locking the poolroom at night. He didn't know whether Bruce could swim in his sleep, and he didn't want to find out.

* * *

Niko Pappas hurled his last newspaper with perfect accuracy onto the front step of a beautiful suburban home. Sighing with relief, he shifted the almost empty canvas bag to a more secure position on his shoulder and peddled furiously down the street. Delivering papers would be a better job if he could have a route closer to his home, but a kid took what he could get. If he went fast enough, he might have time for thirty minutes of sleep before his mother made him get up for school.

It had rained during the night, and his bike tires made whirring noises as he whizzed through puddles. He was only five minutes from home when a truck, going at least twenty miles over the speed limit, roared past and sent an arc of gutter water cascading over him. Niko indulged in a few choice expressions which his mother had forbidden him to ever, _ever_ use, and rode home in deep gloom. Now he would have to wash the filth off, which meant no time for a nap.

Everyone else was still in bed when he walked through the front door, conscientiously taking his wet shoes off in the entryway. He set his canvas bag on a kitchen chair and gingerly pulled out the saturated newspaper inside. He was always given a couple of extra papers to carry on the route, in case of accident, and if he didn't need them he got to keep them, a fact his father appreciated. Niko spread the wet pages on the table, hoping they would dry enough by the time his father left for work so that he could read the paper on the subway, and was about to head for the bathroom when a small back page article caught his eye. **Bat's Sidekick Reappears**.

His breath catching with excitement, Niko struggled to make out the slightly blurred printing. The article said that several days before, the Batman had been spotted at the scene of a car accident, allegedly helping one of the victims. With him, or so claimed the eyewitness, was a small person dressed entirely in black and wearing a ski mask. The writer (probably under pressure to fill space) speculated that this might be the same individual who had assisted the Bat at the pawnshop robbery and, given his or her small size, thought that perhaps the Bat was training a youthful army of vigilantes to fight crime and corruption. At that point, the writer reached his word minimum, and the article ended.

Niko delicately tore the article out of the page and hurried to the kitchen. Ariadne's bedroom was actually a large closet which had been originally intended to hold a washing machine and dryer. The appliances were never installed in the apartment, but the space had been converted into sleeping quarters for Ari who, as the only daughter, presented a problem in a two bedroom apartment.

Niko pulled open the folding doors and whispered excitedly, "Ari! Wake up!" She moaned and turned over, so he reached out and shook her shoulder. "Wake up!"

"Niko?" she asked sleepily. "What do you want? You smell funny."

"That boy was seen with Batman again," Niko hissed, ignoring her comment about his smell.

Ariadne sat up abruptly. "What?"

"It says so in the paper." Niko read her the article. "Do you think it was the same guy?"

"Probably. I wonder why the newspaper writer thinks there's a whole army?"

"I don't know. Maybe he made it up. But wouldn't it be awesome, if it was true? All kinds of kids all over the city working for the Batman."

"Would you want to work for him?"

"Duh!" Niko exclaimed. It was just like a girl to doubt his answer to _that_ question. "But why would the Batman ever recruit me? He probably wants kids who like, know judo and stuff."

"Just because you don't know judo doesn't mean you can't do stuff," Ariadne argued. "And listen, Niko, I've got an idea."

Niko eyed her warily. You could never tell about Ariadne's ideas. Sometimes they were really good and sometimes they were just plain weird. "What is it?"

"You remember how Demetrios painted the sun catcher for Mrs. Portokalos, and Hector hung it outside her window?"

Niko groaned. "How could I forget?"

"I heard her talking in the hallway that day. She said it was the nicest thing anyone had done for her in a long time."

"So?" her brother impatiently demanded.

"Well, why can't we do stuff like that? Nice things, I mean, and keep them a secret? Then we'd be just like the Batman."

This was _not_ one of her good ideas. "Ariadne!" Niko exclaimed in exasperation. "The Batman does not go around being _nice_ to people. He catches criminals!"

"Well, that's nice! For the people who aren't criminals, I mean," she amended. "And he does other stuff too, like rescuing people in trouble."

"Yeah, important stuff! Not dumb stuff like hanging some stupid painting on a window."

"Doing nice things for people is not dumb!"

"Maybe not for girls," Niko conceded. "But it would be dumb for me. What would the guys say if they found out?"

"Why would they care?"

"Believe me, they would."

"Please, Niko! I can't by myself, and Demetrios can't keep secrets, and Hector's too busy."

"I'm busy too," Niko informed her.

"Please?"

"No."

* * *

"There was a poem in this book," Dick said accusingly as he handed over his essay.

"Oh, you noticed that?" Alex asked innocently while Dick rolled his eyes. "What did you think of it?"

"It was terrible! I mean, hello! Green is not gold. At least it explained later what it was supposed to mean."

Alex sighed. "I meant the book in general."

"Oh. It was good. I liked it."

"That's a positive sign. Why did you like it?"

Dick thought for a moment. "It seemed like it was true, you know, even though it was made up. I mean, it seems like stuff that really happens to people – being poor and fighting and people dying and not being able to do anything to stop it."

_Pretty deep thoughts for a kid who lives in the world of beautiful people_, Alex thought, impressed despite himself. He asked, "Did anything in the book surprise you?"

Dick shrugged. "Not really, except for the poem. That surprised me, and I don't mean in a good way." He made a face.

"Why do you think the author included the poem in the book?"

"I don't know. Why didn't she just say what she said at the end about still believing in good things without dragging the poem into it?"

"Believe it or not, sometimes ideas have more power when they're in a poem than when they're said straight out."

Dick shrugged, his favorite response when discussing poetry. But then he said thoughtfully, "My mom believed that, about still looking for the good things when everything seems bad, I mean."

In the months they'd been working together, this was the first time Alex had heard the boy mention his mother. He stayed quiet, listening.

"And Alfred believes it," Dick continued, talking softly, as though to himself, staring at some point over Alex's shoulder. "And I believe it. I think … I think Bruce believes it. It's hard to tell sometimes." His eyes swung to his tutor's face. "Do you believe it?"

"I do," Alex affirmed.

Apparently that was all Dick had to say, because he remained silent and after a moment started fidgeting with a rip in his jeans.

"Enough English for now," Alex decided. "Let's get to work on those equations." He picked up the book and passed it to Dick, who grabbed it and winced. "How's your arm?"

Dick looked startled. "My arm? Oh yeah, my arm. It's still a little sore."

Alex watched the kid settle at his desk, a pesky thought nibbling at the edge of his mind. He could have sworn that it was Dick's _other_ arm that had been injured.

* * *

For once, Bruce was home for lunch, and after the meal was over he led Dick into the study. "I hope you didn't have any other plans for this afternoon," he said, opening the elevator and motioning his ward inside, "because we have work to do."

"Nope," Dick said cheerfully, trying to be casual. This was the first time they had done Bat stuff in the middle of the day. "Are we going out?"

"No." Inside the caverns, Bruce opened a program on one of the computers. "The information that's transmitted from that bug we planted is recorded, and then the computer makes a transcript of it. But it's not always completely accurate, so what you have to do is listen and made certain the transcription is correct."

"Got it." Dick settled down with a printout and began fooling around with the audio controls. There wasn't much to do once he got those fixed. The computer was fairly accurate, aside from mixing up the occasional /b/ and /d, and although the bug had been recording for a few days now, most of the noise was the television running. It was tedious, but Dick didn't mind. He again had that sense that he was _doing_ something, that he had finally arrived at somewhere he'd been trying to get to for a long time.

When he reached Sunday night, things finally got interesting. Three people appeared on the recording, two men and a woman. They watched a baseball game, and then the woman announced she was going to bed. "Staying tonight, sugar?" she asked.

"Definitely," the man called Jarvis replied. "I just have some business to talk over with Hank."

"Well, don't be too long," she cooed, and Dick made a gagging noise at the computer.

There was the sound of a door closing in the distance, and then Jarvis asked, "How's business?"

"It's good, it's good." Springs squeaked as Hank apparently settled back in his chair. His mind flashing to the condo, Dick mentally positioned him in a tan recliner. "In fact, it's so good, I almost got more money than I know what to do with, if you know what I mean."

Jarvis chuckled. "Never a bad problem to have. I'm sure something will come up. A new investment, perhaps?"

"That would be ideal. It would be great to find something in the next week or so."

"I'm sure you will."

The springs squeaked again, and then Hank said, "I'd better get home before Myrna calls the cops on me. I'll see you next week."

There was the sound of footsteps, and then Hank's faint voice said, "How about those Red Sox?"

"Never count on the Red Sox," Jarvis told him, and shut the door.

There was no conversation on the rest of the recording. Dick shut off the audio player and stretched stiffly. Although he had been able to skip over large sections of the recording, he had still been at the computer for nearly three hours. He stood and looked around for Bruce.

The billionaire was sitting at a nearby table, patiently sorting through a mountain of printouts with a highlighter in hand. "Anything interesting?" he asked as Dick walked over.

"Just this." He handed over the part of the printout that contained the Sunday night conversation.

Bruce scanned it. "Interesting, indeed."

"What does it mean?" Dick asked, dragging up a chair so that he could sit next to his guardian.

"Jarvis is Jarvis McGinty, the city councilman. The other man is Hank James, an entrepreneur. The police suspect James of being involved in a variety of illegal activities, but they haven't been able to actually tie him to anything."

"What kind of activities?"

"Everything from brothels to moving black market goods to illegal booking operations."

"Like the kind of stuff we saw that night?" Dick asked slowly, remembering all of the televisions they had helped load on the van and the prostitute standing beneath the streetlight.

"That was the dirty end of the business, but yes, that kind of stuff. Recently, we've begun to think that James has a silent partner, someone respectable who helps him launder the profits."

"You think it's this councilman?"

"Yep," Bruce answered, his eyes going back to the printout.

"But what did that conversation mean?"

"If I had to guess, I'd say James is making more money than he can safely launder through his current channels. He's asking McGinty to set up some new contacts for him."

"That makes sense," Dick agreed, looking at the recorded words in a new light. "Will you give this to the police?"

"No."

"But they could use it to catch McGinty and James!"

"Yes, but no D.A. would prosecute on this evidence. For one thing, it's extremely insubstantial. For another, it's illegal."

"Illegal?" Dick demanded, shocked. "But…you're deputized. Don't you have permission to investigate people?"

"Even a federal employee needs permission from a judge to wire someone's house or tap their phone line."

"But … if we're breaking the law, how does that make us any different from them?"

Bruce looked at him evenly. "In some ways, we're not."

Dick dropped his gaze to the printout. "If you can't give that to the police, what will you do?"

"Tip them off to watch any new investments Hank James makes in the next couple of weeks. They'll know what to do from there."

* * *

Gordon parked his car and climbed out, ducking his head against the rain that sheeted down out of grim skies. Darting into the entrance of the coffee shop, he paused and took a deep breath before he scanned the room. Barbara was already there. She had a chosen a corner table and her back was to the wall. Aware that she had seen him, Gordon didn't bother with ordering anything but went straight to the table.

"How's your mother?" he asked quietly, sitting across from her. His wife looked tired; her high cheekbones stood out in sharp relief against the shadows beneath her eyes.

"She's fine. Angry with you."

That wasn't exactly a surprise. Gordon took a breath and plunged into his prepared speech. "Barbara, we both know this is my fault. I've been the perfect model of the absent husband these past few years, and I know that. I can't begin to express how sorry I am that it took you actually leaving to make me realize how far I'd gone. But I have woken up. I'm going to change, Barbara."

She turned her coffee cup around in her hands, her slender fingers caressing the ceramic. The light caught the rings that she still wore. "Jim, I don't mean to sound cynical, but you've said that before."

Gordon gripped his knees beneath the table and did his best to keep his voice steady. "I should have said, I am changing. I've handed the casino case over to O'Hara, and I've told several other lieutenants that I'm going hands off on their projects." Barbara's head remained bent over her coffee, but by her stillness he knew that she was listening. "I've also found a marriage counselor who's willing to work with us if you …" He fumbled in his jacket pocket. "Here's her card."

The cardboard rectangle lay next to her saucer where he had pushed it, but Barbara made no move to pick it up. "I don't know, Jim. Sometimes I think that what you do is what you have to do. But I can't do it with you anymore. I'm sorry." Her voice trembled slightly on the apology.

_Don't panic_, Gordon told himself fiercely. "You may believe that, but I don't. We made promises when we got married, and even though I've completely broken them, I don't think that means I've been released from them. My first loyalty is at home, with you and the kids. It always should have been. It was dead wrong to let police work take priority, no matter how important it might have seemed."

Lifting her head, Barbara finally met his eyes. "You say that now, but will you still be saying it in two months?"

"I am asking for one more chance. If I screw it up, you can go and I won't say a word. You can have the house, if you like, and I won't …" Tears burned the backs of his eyes, and he had to pause to gain control of his voice. "I won't fight you on custody."

"And if I don't offer another chance, will you battle custody rights?"

Gordon let out a low, weary sigh. "I don't know. Maybe. Because I still think I can learn to do things differently."

Rain slammed against the window as the wind changed direction, and Barbara glanced at her watch. "You told the kids I'd pick them up at school?"

"Yeah." Gordon's stomach grew heavy, as if he'd swallowed cement. _Is this it?_

Barbara met his eyes one more time. "I'll think about it," she promised, and picked up the card.

It was more than he deserved – he knew that and went limp with gratitude. "Thank you."

She nodded and stood, buttoning her coat. "I'll call you."

"I'll be waiting."

Gordon watched her duck out into the rain and head toward her car. His hands were shaking. _I need coffee. Black, black coffee._ The cashier had just handed him a steaming mug when the harsh sound of grinding metal and breaking glass echoed in the street outside.

Without knowing why, he dropped the cup and ran, vaguely the registering the sound of ceramic shattering on the tile and the cashier's shouted protest. Auto accidents happened every day in Gotham, especially when it rained. As a cop, he'd seen more wrecks than he could begin to count, so he didn't know why _this_ one had sent fear pounding through his veins like adrenaline. _I'm going to feel very stupid in about five seconds._

His shoes slipped on the slick pavement, and he caught himself against a wall, pausing for a second to survey the scene ahead. Two vehicles lay crumpled in the middle of the intersection – a red Toyota Land Cruiser had t-boned the driver's side of a silver Chevy Malibu. _Barbara drives a silver Malibu_. His mind informed him that there were probably a thousand of that exact same car in Gotham City proper alone, not counting the suburbs, but his feet were running again. He shoved into the crowd that had already formed and darted into the street, where he could see the plate number on the Chevy.

_Oh, God._

An impenetrable network of fractures covered the windshield which miraculously remained in the frame so that he couldn't see into the car.

_Please, God. Don't let it be._

Running to the driver's side, he jerked the door handle. It was locked. "Barbara!" he shouted tugging frantically on the handle. He could see her through this window, slumped over the wheel. His fist pounded against the glass, but to no avail. _I'm a cop. I can't even get in the car..._ Somehow, he remembered that he had a key.

It took two tries to fit the metal strip into the slot, but he was finally throwing the door open and kneeling on the passenger's seat. "Barbara?"

Her neck was bent at an unnatural angle as her head lay on steering wheel. Blood soaked her lap, and a thin stream trickled down the side of her face. Gritting his teeth, he reached out with two shaking fingers and set them beneath her ear, feeling for a pulse. There had to be a pulse. _Where is it? Oh God, where is it?_ "Barbara," he pleaded, not recognizing his own voice. "Just be breathing, baby, just be breathing."

He didn't know how long he knelt there, waiting for her pulse, before sirens screamed outside and someone laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Sir, you need to let the paramedics help her." Dazed, he turned to look into the face of a young patrol officer.

"Chief!" she exclaimed, startled.

"It's Barbara," he explained, although surely that was obvious.

Numb, he let himself be helped from the car. A paramedic took his place on the passenger's seat, while another draped a blanket around his shoulders. He wondered why – _he_ hadn't been in an accident.

He kept his eyes fixed on the paramedic inside the car. After a minute, the man emerged, met his colleague's eyes, and shook his head.

_No pulse._

_Barbara._

_To Be Continued_

**A/N** I feel like a sadistic murderess! Honestly, your honor, the canon made me do it!

I actually made myself cry writing this chapter, something that, to my memory (which is notoriously faulty), I have never done before.

Review if you liked anything about this chapter!


	12. Boiling Point

**A/N** WHUACK! I can't believe I FINALLY finished this chapter! I meant to have it up a lot sooner, but it went all sticky on me. I should have THREE chapters for all the time I've spent trying to get this one together! However, it's nice and long and I hope it was worth waiting for.

As always, THANK YOU reviewers! Your thoughtful comments give me the determination to keep plugging away, even when the characters tell me to bug off! (And a special thank you to all the anonymous reviewers of the last chapter, since I couldn't reply to your reviews.)

**Disclaimer** No rabbits were harmed in the writing of this chapter.

Chapter 12  
**In Which Several People Reach Their Boiling Points**

_I have been one acquainted with the night.  
I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.  
I have outwalked the furthest city light._  
_- Robert Frost_

Sarah Essen bent her head as the minister uttered a closing prayer. Barbara Gordon's funeral was over. The organist played a slow processional as the pallbearers carried the coffin down the aisle, the family walking immediately behind them. She stole a long, sideways glance at their faces, not wanting to gawk, but nevertheless feeling compelled to witness their grief. James (_When did I start thinking of him as James?_) came first, holding the hand of a small boy. The man's face was set and grim, the boy's was scared. Behind them walked an elderly woman and a teenaged girl. The grandmother – she had to be one of the grandmothers – appeared weary with grief, but Sarah got the impression of a determined woman, strong beneath her sorrow. The girl was crying as she walked, her slender shoulders shaking with repressed sobs. Her face was half hidden by bright coppery hair, but as she passed Sarah's pew, she turned her head slightly. For an instant, beneath the perfect veneer of the grieving daughter, something fierce flashed across the pale face.

Sarah shuddered and reached for her coat. Despite the rainy day, the air conditioning was blowing, and the people filling the seats weren't enough to offset the chilled air.

Only a select party would go to the grave site, and once they were gone, the rest of the attendees began to stand and move. It was a large crowd, and included a few city VIPs. There were also a lot of cops, most of them looking uncomfortable and relieved to be heading out. It was, she thought, a mark of the respect Gordon commanded in this town that the mayor and the lowly beat cop had both come.

As she stood and buttoned her coat, her eyes automatically continued to scan the crowd, and her attention was caught by a tall man in a dark coat. He was wearing a hat, and although he stood quite unobtrusively as he waited his turn to exit from the pew into the aisle, he kept his head down in a manner that suggested he didn't want to be recognized. Sara squinted, trying to make out his features. The profile seemed vaguely familiar, and as he turned to slip through a gap in the crowd, she caught a full view of his face.

_Bruce Wayne?_ she recognized, startled. _I would have thought he wouldn't be caught dead at a thing like this. Unless he was dead, in which case the funeral would be his..._

O'Hara, who had sat beside her, tapped her shoulder. "You want to go and grab a bite? It's close to dinner time."

"Sure," she agreed. They ran into two other detectives just outside the church, and the four of them ended up in a smoky sandwich shop, squished around a tiny corner table.

"The chief still looked pretty shaken up," Detective Green commented before biting into his panini. "I talked to the officer who pulled him out of the car. She said he wasn't even coherent."

"Yeah, well you might not be either if you'd just found your wife with her neck broken," his partner informed him.

Green shrugged and swallowed his mouthful of sandwich. "Rumor had it she wasn't so thrilled to see him in any condition."

"Just because you're thinking divorce, doesn't mean you want the other party to end up dead." Curtis settled back in his tiny chair, causing it to creak ominously. "Take my second wife, for example. No arguments, no death threats, just a nice friendly agreement to split."

"I thought she put sleeping pills in your coffee."

"No, no, that was my third wife."

"How many wives have you had, Curtis?" O'Hara demanded.

Curtis looked innocent. "Just three."

"But he's working on number four," Green put in. "Problem is, he doesn't have a ring. Number three wouldn't give it back."

O'Hara chuckled and Sarah rolled her eyes. She had never understood people who threw themselves into one doomed marriage after another, like it was some kind of hobby.

"You think the chief will start looking for number two?" Curtis asked.

Green shook his head. "I don't know. He was married to this one for what – fifteen? twenty? years. That's a pretty good run for a cop. He might not want a replacement. You know what they say: If you take too long on your firsts, your seconds get cold."

"Who says that?" Curtis asked.

"Everyone."

"I never heard anyone say that. I bet you just made that up right now."

Green refused to be drawn into the argument. "The point is that he probably won't be looking to get re-entangled anytime soon."

"On the other hand, he's got two kids," Curtis pointed out.

"He can afford a nice daycare. Or he can ask the wife's mother to come and take care of them. She'd probably do it for nothing."

"Oh no." Curtis shook his head. "That's not even a last resort. Not if his mother-in-law's anything like mine."

"Which one?"

"Any of them. They all hate my guts."

"So he might get married to keep her _out_ of the house…"

"Stop it!" Sarah snapped

Her three companions looked at her in some surprise. "What's the matter, Essen, you actually like your mother-in-law?"

"I don't have one. But I think we could speak a little more respectfully of a grieving family, especially when we just came from the funeral."

Green's face became curious. "You got a special interest in that grieving family, Essen?"

She looked at him coldly. "No. But just because I'm a cop, it doesn't I'm bereft of common decency." Glancing at her watch, she stood. "I've got to go. There was some kind of special bulletin coming in from Metropolis this afternoon." She tossed ten bucks on the table and grabbed her coat, ignoring the three pairs of speculative eyes that followed her exit.

* * *

"Babsie, can you sleep with me? Please?" Jimmy looked pleadingly at his big sister. "I'm scared."

Babs perched on the edge of the bed and smoothed the little boy's hair back from his forehead. "Why are you scared?"

Jimmy buried his face in his pillow so that Babs had to lean close to hear his words. "I don't want you to die like mommy."

"I'm not going to die, Jimmy," she said, a little roughly to hold back the lump in her throat.

Lifting his face out of the pillow, he stared at her accusingly. "You said mommy was going to come back."

Guilt washed over Babs. "I thought she was. I can't control everything that happens," she snapped defensively. _Why does he have to be so difficult?_

"So maybe you'll die. Maybe you just think you won't," he persisted.

"I am not going to die!" Babs shouted.

Jimmy's eyes filled with tears and his lips began to tremble. "Don't get mad, Babs."

She stood and took a deep breath, pushing the hair away from her face. "I'll sleep with you, ok? Just let me put my pajamas on."

"Ok," he whispered.

In her own room, Babs leaned against the door and twisted her knuckles against her shut eyelids until brilliant lights filled her vision. Why did he have to want her? What was wrong with dad or grandma? She grit her teeth, trying to push down the fury that had been building inside of her ever since her mom had walked out of the house. She was so angry – with her mom for dying, with herself for fighting with her mom, with her dad for never being around, with Grandma for not being more understanding, with Jimmy for being so needy. A cold washcloth felt soothing on her skin, but did nothing to cool the raging inside of her, and she changed into her pajamas slowly, hoping her brother would have fallen asleep by the time she returned.

But Jimmy was sitting up, waiting for her. After she had switched off the light and crawled in beside him, he snuggled up and whispered, "Babs, sing the bedtime song."

Babs swallowed hard and whispered back, "Why don't you sing it to me tonight?"

"But I don't know all the words."

"Sure you do. You've probably sung it a thousand times. I'll help you if you get stuck."

"Ok." Jimmy took a deep breath and began in a thin, little boy falsetto, "_Sleep, my child and peace attend thee, all through the night_."

"Go on," Babs urged when he stopped.

"I don't remember what comes next."

"Guardian angels," she prompted.

"Oh yeah. _Guardian angels God will lend thee, all through the night. Soft the drowsy hours are creeping, hill and vale in slumber steeping. I my loving vigil keeping, all through the night._"

Babs sighed in relief and closed her eyes. "Ok, now go to sleep." She closed her eyes and took long, even breaths, hoping Jimmy would do the same.

"Babs?"

"What?" she muttered.

"What's a vigil?"

"It's when you stay awake to watch for something."

"Like what?"

"Like danger. Go to sleep, Jimmy."

Thankfully, he subsided, burying his face in his dinosaur and cuddling up against her. Babs watched him sleep, both envying his apparent peace and wishing she could help him keep it forever. _I my loving vigil keeping..._ The trouble, thought Babs as weariness began to pull her eyelids down, was that not enough people kept vigil. _If the driver who killed mom had paid more attention to the light...if mom had looked to make sure the intersection was clear...if dad had noticed how bad things were getting at home..._

Jimmy sighed softly in his sleep, and Babs felt her anger with him melt away. He was so helpless. _Someone has to keep vigil over Jimmy. It may as well be me._

She snuggled her chin against her brother's soft hair, and gave in to her tiredness. Sleep hadn't come easily the last few nights. As she drifted off, the edge of a voice tickled her memory.

_What if we organized and trained and watched for opportunities?...I'm offering you a path...a way out..._

* * *

"You can let me move in, or you can fight me for custody."

James Gordon stared at his mother-in-law in disbelief. _Doesn't she have the decency to wait until the day after the funeral?_ "Jane, these are my children."

"And my daughter was divorcing you for absenteeism. I've made up my mind, James. All that's left is for you to make up yours."

Having never gotten along well with his mother-in-law, who thought that police work was the wrong profession for her only daughter's husband, he should have expected something like this, but her cold determination was staggering. He knew from bitter experience that when she decided something, she was typically as immovable as the Rocky Mountains, but in this case, he was convinced the emotions of the afternoon had colored her judgment. Surely even she would see reason after she'd had a few days to calm down.

Biting back his acid anger at the unveiled move to control of his children, Gordon snatched his keys off the tabletop. "I'm going out for awhile. If that's all right."

"Quite all right. I'll leave the porch light on for you."

"Thank you," he gritted, and headed for his car. It was probably not a good idea to leave right now – it would look to Jane as though he were already deserting the kids – but it was either this, or launch into a fight that would make the ones he'd had with Barbara sound like cheerful banter.

The car had a full tank and he headed for the freeway, wanting long straight stretches and no traffic while he calmed down. His headlights sliced through deep shadows, and the tension between his shoulder blades began to ease. But as the anger died away, and the image he had seen day and night since the accident crept into its place. The memory of Barbara's broken and blood soaked body haunted him with guilt. If he hadn't been such a rotten husband, she never would have been in that intersection. She would still be alive and with her kids, where she belonged.

_Maybe Jane is right. Maybe I'm not fit to handle the kids on my own. Maybe I'm not fit to handle them at all._ His hands clenched on the wheel, and he abruptly swerved across two lanes of traffic onto an exit ramp. Even though his duties no longer called him to patrol, he still knew most of Gotham, especially the seedy parts, like the back of his hand, and he threaded his way through the narrow downtown streets until he was near the docks. Leaving his car in the filthy parking lot of a battered strip mall, he headed for the only business that was still open. When he came out of the liquor store, fourteen ounces of Jack Daniel's in hand, he ignored his car and turned his steps toward the harbor.

He found a spot beneath a broken streetlight and leaned against the shaky railing. The rain had finally stopped and the city lights reflected off the overcast sky, creating a red haze. Below him, the water shimmered darkly, mesmerizing.

Gordon opened his bottle and gulped, then shuddered and coughed as liquid fire burned down his throat. He wasn't a hard drinking man, unless you counted caffeine, but he was desperate for something to drive out that image of dead Barbara. _Dead, dead, dead._ Another swallow and a comforting warmth began to spread in his stomach. But as he lifted the bottle for third time, a picture flashed across his brain of himself staggering home drunk, or worse yet, not making it home at all. Jane would have packed up the kids and gone before he even hauled his hungover ass into the driveway. Quickly, before he could change his mind, he stretched out his arm and dropped the bottle into the harbor. It hit with a small splash, but it was too dark to see the ripples as the water swallowed his liquid comfort.

Gordon folded both arms on top of the rail and closed his eyes. Below him, the water swished rhythmically. Behind him, he could hear the ceaseless mechanical roar of the city, occasionally punctuated by bangs and snatches of music. Despite the days of rain, the harbor still sank, and he breathed in slowly, his nostrils flaring at the blend of sweet rot and acrid exhaust. Here, he thought, was the essence of Gotham. In this spot, misery became a thing of tangible sensuality. Gordon bent his head and felt the weight of a city smothering in its own filth and malfeasance, and for the first time, he felt a part of it. This then, was what he had been pouring out his life to save, this mass of shuddering despair, where you could drive twenty minutes in any direction and find a place that showed no reflection of the fact that there was a James Gordon. Or a Batman. This place didn't need to be saved. It needed to be put out of its torment.

"Chief?"

The voice sounded far distant, but when Gordon opened his eyes and turned his head, he found Detective Sarah Essen standing right next to him.

"Chief, are you … that is, can I help you with anything?" Her voice was uncertain and her face was worried.

Gordon turned his gaze back to the harbor. "Thank you, no. I'm just enjoying the delightful view."

His sarcasm didn't drive her away. Rather, she shuffled a little closer. "Chief, he's watching you," she whispered.

"Who?" Gordon asked disinterestedly, still staring at the water.

"The Batman." Essen turned her head slightly and lifted her eyes to the roofs of the buildings behind them.

Moving slowly, Gordon turned and deliberately lifted his face, openly scanning the rooftops.

"He's gone now," Essen breathed.

"He was probably making sure I wasn't going to jump," Gordon said, deep bitterness in his voice. "He hasn't squeezed me for everything I'm worth yet. _Damn him._"

Essen looked startled and a little frightened. Gordon shoved his hands in his pockets and blew out a long breath. "I'll walk you back to your car," he half told, half ordered her. "The docks aren't a good place to be alone." A roll of thunder seemed to emphasize his words, and the rain began sprinkling down again.

"I know," she said evenly. "I'll drive you back to your car."

Her reply irritated him, and he was about to give her a cutting refusal, when the worry in her face suddenly registered. He realized that she cared. She barely knew him, but for whatever reason, she stood here in midst of Gothams' squalor _caring_ about whether or not he would get mugged on the way back to his car. And somehow, that small illogical fact was more warming than the whiskey.

Gordon nodded in acquiescence. "Thanks."

* * *

Niko followed Hector off the bus, through the rain into their apartment building. "You think it's ever gonna stop raining?" he asked as they trudged up the stairs.

"It better. We got a big soccer game planned for Saturday," Hector answered, pulling out his key and fitting it into the lock. "Those guys from forty-second street are coming over." He opened the door.

"Hector and Niko, thank heaven." Athena flew toward her sons. "We are taking Ari to emergency."

The eyes of both boys flew to the tall, silent figure of their father, who stood in the middle of the kitchen, cradling his carefully bundled daughter.

"You have to pick Demetrios up from Mrs. Simonson on Stavely Street. You know where it is?"

"Yeah, mom." Hector held open the door. "We'll get him, just go."

She fumbled in her pocket and produced a bill. "Here. Have a pizza for supper, but don't spend the change!"

"We won't," Hector replied, taking the money and automatically shoving it in his pocket, his eyes still on his sister. "Is she bad?"

"If she wasn't would we take her to emergency?" Athena snapped. "Kostos, come."

After they were gone, Niko dug the toe of his sneaker against a crack in the linoleum. "Shit," he said distinctly.

"She always gets sick when it rains so much," Hector reminded him.

"Yeah, but she hasn't been in the hospital since…" Niko frowned, trying to remember. "Christmas before last? Except for the knife thing."

"She'll be ok," Hector promised, sounding less sure than he had intended. "I gotta go get Demetrios. You want to pick up the pizza?"

"Sure."

Hector pulled Athena's twenty out of his pocket. "Bring back all the change or mama will skin you."

"I will, I'm not stupid."

They went down the stairs together, but Niko paused at the bottom to fix his shoelace that had come untied. As he bowed the ends, screaming erupted from the Martinez's first floor apartment.

"_Siempre me pides dinero! _I gave you money last week!_"_

"You think I can feed_ cinco niños con veinte dólares para siempre?"_

"_Quizás que comprases con mas cuidado, _you wouldn't have this problem."

"_Quizas que no bebas tanta cerveza, no sea necesario _to starve your children!"

The last statement was followed by a sharp crack and a cry. The door of the apartment flew open and Mr. Martinez stormed out of the building, leaving a reek of alcohol fumes behind him. Niko shrank back against the wall until he was sure the man was gone. Mr. Martinez scared him. Whenever he was home, which wasn't too often, someone was always screaming, and usually someone was getting hit. Sometimes Pedro, Hector's best friend, would come up the fire escape and sleep on the floor of their bedroom.

Wailing drifted from inside the apartment, and Niko hurried out into the rain, gratefully gulping the wet air. There were enough overhangs along the way that he could keep out of the worst of the rain, but he was still thoroughly damp by the time he arrived at the pizza parlor. He ordered a medium supreme, and while he was waiting near the counter, a man stormed in, carrying a drenched pizza box.

"There's a hair on this pizza!" he yelled, slamming the box down on the counter. "This place is so disgusting – I don't know why I come here."

"I'm sorry, I'm very sorry," the cashier apologized, pushing the box to the side. "We'll give you a refund, of course."

"And a free pizza, that's your policy," the man reminded her.

"Certainly, sir, do you have your receipt?"

The cashier hastily completed the transaction, while the customer made snide comments about dirty little restaurants and the dirty little people who ran them.

A cook in an apron came out holding a pizza box. "One medium supreme."

"I'll take that," the man snapped, reaching for the box.

The cashier held on to it. "I'm sorry, sir, but this pizza belongs to another customer." She nodded toward Niko.

The furious man leaned across the counter so that his face was only inches away from hers. "First you contaminate my order, and now you make me wait for some little street punk?"

The cashier shrank back, looking frightened. "Sir, please just be patient…"

"Give me that pizza you little tramp, before I call your manager!"

"He can have it," Niko said hastily. "I can wait."

The man jerked the box out of her hands and stomped back out into the rain. The cashier let out a shaky breath and leaned against the counter. "Thanks," she said gratefully.

Niko shrugged casually. "No problem." He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets, pretending not to notice that she was very pretty.

"That guy comes in here about once a month, always with the same complaint." She lifted up the box lid, shaking her head. "Look at that – he didn't even lift out a slice. There's nothing wrong with this pizza. He's just cheap."

Niko looked into the box and nodded in agreement. "What will you do with it?"

"Throw it away. We can't sell a returned pizza."

An idea sparked in the back of Niko's mind. "Can I have it?" he asked, even before his thoughts had full formed.

The girl glanced around, then nodded. "Sure, but don't tell anyone I gave it to you."

"You got it. Thanks!"

"Hey, thank you for getting rid of the jerk." She winked at him and Niko felt his face go hot. The cashier pulled a large bag out from beneath the counter and put the pizza in it, just as the cook reappeared.

"Medium supreme," he announced.

The girl placed it with the other one and handed over the bag. "Have a good night."

On the way home, his idea added flesh to its bones, and he stopped by Sims for a gallon of milk. Back in the apartment, he was relieved to find his brothers had not yet returned. Hurrying to his room, Niko pulled out his personal cash box, and, with a small grimace, counted out enough money to pay for the milk. Then he flipped open one of his school notebooks and hesitated, pen in hand, thinking. At last he printed in large capital letters, "Have a good night, Mrs. Martinez. A Friend." 'A Friend' was how they always signed anonymous letters in the movies. Niko stared at the note for another moment, and then, before he could change his mind, hastily added "of the Batman." _There, that better make Ari happy_.

Feeling nervous and, for some inexplicable reason, guilty, Niko put the pizza he had bought along with the change on the kitchen table. Then, pulling up the hood of his sweatshirt, he crept down the stairs and placed the free pizza, the milk, and the note in front of the Martinez's door. Getting ready to run, he banged his fist on the door and darted back up the stairs, crouching on the second landing so that he could peer down the stairwell.

The door of the first floor apartment. "_Sí_? Hello?" a woman's voice asked and then gasped. Niko waited, tensed all over and unconsciously holding his breath. "Thank you!" she suddenly called. "_Diós te bendiga_." The door slammed shut, and Niko raced for his apartment.

* * *

Dick was supposed to be working on his biology assignment, but he had been staring at the same microscope slide for over ten minutes. A vague discontent was undermining his focus, and as much as he hated to admit it, it had to do with Batman. Bruce had put him in charge of keeping tabs on the bug in McGinty's mistress' apartment, but every time he went down to check on the recording, he had been troubled by uneasiness. He couldn't recapture his first sense of contentment in just "doing something," and even though he wasn't ready to acknowledge it, a kind of picture had been forming in his mind.

At last finishing with the slides, Dick cleaned up his equipment and went to find Alex. The tutor was sitting with Alfred in the small kitchen, having lunch and watching the news. Dick pulled a stool up to the counter where a sandwich was waiting for him, and began to eat quietly. He paid little attention to the news until a particular name caught his ear.

_...and Councilman Jarvis McGinty began his campaign for reelection today with a speech at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new community garden,_ the anchorwoman announced. The screen flashed to pictures of McGinty digging a pickaxe into a stretch of concrete and then standing behind a podium.

_Fellow citizens of Gotham, today we have witnessed the start of something good: A garden where the people of this neighborhood can come to sink their fingers into clean earth and appreciate the miracle of growth. This fall, a construction crew will remove the concrete and put down topsoil. In the spring, it will become a place where we can bring our children to teach them the importance of ecology and community. Five years ago, this project would not have been possible. Five years ago, the people in this neighborhood would have been afraid to let their children come to such a public place because the crime rate in this district was so high. But that is no longer the case, thanks in large part to the efforts of Chief of Police James Gordon. I have, and will as long as I hold this office, support the work of Chief Gordon to make our city safe, no matter how unorthodox his methods may be._

"Smart man," Alex commented as the news program moved on to the next topic.

"Why?" Dick demanded, transferring his frowning gaze from the television to his tutor.

"McGinty's making Batman a part of his platform. That's what he meant by 'unorthodox methods.' He represents a fairly poor district, and Batman has a lot of support with the working class."

"So if he says he supports Batman, these people will vote for him?"

"That's the idea. It's pretty ironic, actually."

"Why?"

"McGinty has every reason to support the Batman. He's a businessman, and since the crime rate started dropping, the city economy has been going up. But the benefits of this are going to the middle and upper classes."

"But isn't the city being made safer for everyone?"

"That seems true, although considering how fast and loose he plays with the law, some people would probably argue against it. But I'm talking economically. The kinds of criminals Batman, and the police, have been going after are the ugly members of the underworld – drug dealers, brothel owners, that kind of thing. But what's really causing Gotham's so-called depression is unfair labor practices and corrupt bureaucracy, and _that_ our new forces of justice have done very little about. Maybe they can't."

Dick jammed his index finger through the corner of his sandwich, then pushed away from the counter. "Excuse me," he muttered, striding out of the room.

He found Bruce in the study, stretched out on the leather sofa with a sandwich in one hand and the phone in the other. "Yeah, I'm really looking forward to Friday night too," he was saying as Dick entered the study without knocking and slammed the door shut behind him.

"I have to talk to you."

Bruce took one look at his ward's angry face and sat up. "Listen, Tinka, I've got to go. I'll see you on Friday." He hung up and looked at Dick questioningly.

"Jarvis McGinty is using Batman as part of his campaign platform."

Bruce nodded slowly. "That's not … unexpected."

Dick folded his arms across his chest. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing!" Dick exploded. "This man is a criminal, he's probably abusing his position of power, he's going to use _you_ to get reelected, and you're not going to do anything about it?"

"What would you suggest that I do?"

"Have the police release a statement that you don't support his campaign."

Bruce shook his head. "Whatever _I_ might prefer to do, the _Batman_ does not make statements and he does not get involved in politics. It's one of the reasons he can still do his job."

"What do you mean what _you_ prefer to do. Bruce, you _are_ him!"

Bruce flinched. "I _play_ him."

Dick ignored the contradiction. "It's like Mr. Peaceable said, isn't it?"

Bruce's eyes narrowed. "Peaceable?"

"You don't really help the people who need it, and you don't respect the law. That's what you've been trying to show me all along, isn't it?" Dick paused as the pieces of the past few weeks clicked into a pattern. "Those people we saw – the drug addicts and the prostitutes and the people who steal because they can't make enough at a real job – what you do doesn't help them. Even that guy we pulled out of the wreck – he was the one who caused it, not the victim! And how can you even say you're fighting for justice when you break the law all the time! How can there even be justice if there isn't a law that treats everyone the same, including you!" Dick was starting to cry, and his voice cracked helplessly. "You tried to show me, and guess what? You showed me! I get it. Batman's not a hero. He's just someone who fights to get what he wants, exactly like everybody else." Without waiting for an answer, Dick spun and ran out of the room.

* * *

Bruce sat frozen on the sofa, staring at the study door which had slammed back against the wall. This was what he had been working for ever since Dick had announced that he wanted to become like Batman.

_This is what I want. Why do I feel like I just lost something?_

He got up and strode over to the window, arguing with himself. Of course it was bound to be a painful experience for both of them. Dick had to be disillusioned, and he himself had to give up the idealized status he had held in the boy's eyes. But still, the depth of the disillusionment lurking beneath Dick's anger had been staggering, and he couldn't shake the feeling that in destroying his ward's faith in Batman he had destroyed something else.

_It can't end like this._

The thought was a conviction. Bruce raced from the room and down the stairs, nearly running into Alex Peaceable at the bottom. "Have you seen Dick?" he demanded.

Peaceable eyed him coldly. "He just ran past here, in tears."

Bruce started off without waiting to hear more, but the tutor called after him, "What did you do to him, Wayne?"

Bruce stopped, then turned and walked back. "What did you say?"

The shorter man stared up fearlessly. "You heard me. We both know he doesn't upset easily, so what did you do to him?"

Bruce's tenuous emotional control snapped. He stepped closer, his eyes black with fury, and snarled, "Get out of my house."

Peaceable held his ground, but his eyes widened. "I…"

Bruce interrupted him, his voice soft but deadly. "Get out." Without another word, he strode down the hallway, forgetting Peaceable as soon as he was out of sight.

"Alfred!" he called desperately, bursting into the kitchen.

His butler looked over. "It's happened then, has it?"

"What have I done, Alfred?"

"What you thought was right."

"Well, I was wrong. The whole time, I was wrong!" Bruce took a deep breath and forced himself to remain controlled. "Where would he go?"

"The cemetery."

Relief washed over Bruce's face. "Of course." He started to leave, hesitated. "I should go after him, shouldn't I?" he asked, his voice broken by uncertainty.

Alfred gave a very small smile. "I always went after you, sir."

"So you did." For moment, an answering smile flicked at the corners of Bruce's mouth, and then he was gone.

_To Be Continued_

**A/N** Man, I almost made myself cry _again _with this chapter. Only almost though ;)

Just one chapter left! I'm going to try to have it up soon, because I'll be doing some traveling in the near future, and I'd love to have this story done before I go.

Several reviewers have mentioned that they weren't familiar with the novel Alex assigned. It's titled The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, and it's really a classic as far as adolescent novels go. It's about being an American teenager in the sixties and focuses on the feud between greasers (poor kids) and Socs (rich kids). It's short, easy to read, and I HIGHLY recommend it! Check it out!


	13. Alliances

**A/N** EEK! The last chapter! I apologize in advance for all the typos, but I'm hopping on a plane to go home for my sister's high school graduation in a few hours, and I'm not taking my laptop with me. (My parents have Internet, but there's a lot of competition to get computer time.)

Chapter 13  
**In Which Unlikely Alliances Find a Beginning**

_This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark …  
- Robert Frost_

Dick huddled against his mother's headstone, tears running down his face. For the last five years, one idea had made meaning out of past pain and had given shape to the future, and now that idea had been stripped away. He felt lost, useless, and stupid for having walked so blindly, but underlying all of that was sheer terror. The world had turned inside out, and at the moment it seemed there was nothing left to believe in. He pressed closer against the cool stone, trying to derive some comfort from its granite immobility.

There was no sound of approach, but when Dick finally wiped his cheek on his sleeve and looked up, Bruce was sitting on the grass a few feet away, watching him. The boy stiffened and glared at the man who no longer seemed like a friend and father. "Go away."

Bruce didn't try to argue but asked. "Can I say something first?"

Dick rested his head back against the stone and remained silent.

"I have to apologize for two things. The first is not understanding how … serious you are about wanting this … training. Alfred tried to tell me, but I didn't … or didn't want to … understand him. I didn't think it was possible that you could actually know what you were asking for. I thought maybe you just thought it was glamorous or exciting or like any other crime fighting job. But that's not it, is it?" Bruce spoke slowly, as if the thoughts were only now revealing themselves to him. "You feel the same way that I do – that it's got to be done, and that you've got to do it."

Dick lifted his head and looked cautiously at his guardian. "Maybe."

Bruce sighed. "You've got to realize that it took me thirty years to get to where you are now. But just because your journey was shorter doesn't mean it's wrong. I get that. Finally."

"I used to think that," Dick said bitterly, "but you just showed me that I didn't, remember?"

"That's the other thing I have to apologize for. I told you that I was going to try and convince you to drop this, but I still didn't … play fair. Incredible as it seems at the moment, I really do believe in Batman, and I believe in what he does. But the things that I showed you – there was only one conclusion you could come to." He paused, but Dick didn't speak, so he continued, "You told me that there can't be a law if it doesn't apply to everyone, and that's true. But the problem is that in Gotham, the law is already broken. It doesn't work for anyone. I still don't know if that justifies what I do, but I can promise you this: the moment this city has a system that resembles justice, and it doesn't have to be perfect as long as it _works_, then Batman will disappear."

Dick nodded slowly. "Ok."

Bruce took a deep breath. "What I'm asking for is another chance."

The words seemed to linger on the light autumn breeze. Dick bent his head again and picked up a bright orange leaf. Twirling the stem between his fingers, he tried to sort through the muddle in his head and heart. Hope was blossoming again, but it was timid and slow. Dick reached out and slowly traced the lettering on the headstone, remembering a promise that he had once made there. A promise he was still determined to keep.

"All right," he said finally. "Another chance. For me too."

"Thank you," Bruce said quietly.

Dick looked at him seriously. "Can people make mistakes and still be heroes?"

"I think they can. You want to be a hero?"

"Yes," Dick said frankly. "I do."

"Well, then." Bruce pushed himself to his feet. "We'd better get started.

* * *

"I'd like to see my sister, please." Niko tried to stand straight and not fidget while a nurse gave him a hard look through her bifocals.

"And your sister is?"

"Ari … Ariadne Pappas."

The nurse looked down a list. "Room 346. Take the elevator to the third floor and go to the right. But don't excite her and don't disturb any of the other patients."

"Yes … I mean, no ma'am." Niko rolled his eyes in relief as the elevator doors hid him from the nurse's disapproving gaze. For a moment, he'd been afraid she wasn't going to let him in.

Ariadne was in a room with three other beds, all of them full. When Niko came in, she was lying still on her back, hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor, an oxygen tube in her nose, her eyes closed. Niko swallowed hard and stepped closer. He didn't exactly understand what was wrong with his sister except that the fever that had stolen her sight when she was a tiny girl had also done something to her heart.

Although he hadn't made a sound, Ariadne stirred and murmured, "Niko?"

"Yeah, yeah it's me." The teen drew a chair up to the side of the bed and sat down. "How you doing?"

She tried to smile. "Ok. I'm just tired."

"You too tired to listen to a secret?" her brother asked, trying to keep his voice cheerful.

"Tell me," she whispered.

Niko bent his head so that he could whisper back. "You remember that idea you had about doing secret things for people? Well, I did something." Briefly, he told her about the pizza and the anonymous note.

When he was finished, a full smile curved Ariadne's lips. "Did you really sign it 'A Friend of the Batman'?"

"Would I tell you a lie?"

"I thought the Batman didn't do stuff like deliver pizza," she teased.

"I still don't think he does. But … maybe his friends can." Niko reached out and very gently tugged on his sister's hair. "Besides, it felt kind of nice."

"I told you," she said, faintly but smugly. "What are we going to do next?"

Niko groaned. "Next?"

"Of course next. Now listen, I have an idea …"

* * *

Alex sat by the window of his modest apartment, sipping a mug of coffee and staring down into the busy city street. Since being ordered out of Wayne Manor the day before, he hadn't heard anything from his employer, and he didn't yet trust his own temper enough to try calling. And if he was honest with himself, his conscience as well as his temper was unquiet. He had gone too far in accusing Wayne of harming his ward, even though he firmly believed it to be true.

Actually, Alex felt guilty about more than yesterday's scene, which had simply been the culmination of several months worth of veiled conflict. Yet again, he asked himself exactly why he detested Bruce Wayne so much, and he came up with the same answer he always did – the guy was a flake. Insincerity oozed from his every pore. Alex couldn't help wondering whether the billionaire had ever been honest with him. _Yesterday_, he realized, not without a tinge of ironic amusement. Bruce Wayne had been completely sincere while booting his erstwhile employee out of the mansion.

At least, Alex was fairly certain he was now an erstwhile, former, and otherwise ex employee. He hadn't actually been told not to come back, but the chances were a hundred to one that his official dismissal was in the mail. _Or on the other end of the phone line_, he thought as the instrument on table jingled. It rang three times before Alex got to it, and even then he lifted the receiver slowly, reluctant to face the inevitable.

However, it was neither the clipped tones of Alfred Pennyworth or the lazy drawl of Bruce Wayne but the slightly quavering voice of his mother. Alice Peaceable lived in a pleasant retirement home a short distance outside of Gotham City proper, but her many social activities did not keep her from taking an active interest in her son's life.

"Alex, I was just going to leave a message on your machine about dinner tomorrow night. I'm making your favorite. Why aren't you at work?"

Alex flopped down in an overstuffed chair and stared up at the ceiling. "I might have gotten fired yesterday."

"Might have?"

"Wayne threw me out of the house, but he didn't actually tell me I was out of a job."

"I see."

Alex closed his eyes and repressed a groan. He hated these knowing silences of hers – it was much worse than a barrage of questions, because he could only make uneasy guesses about what she was thinking. "It's probably for the best. Given the way Wayne and I get along, it would have happened sooner or later, so it's better that it happened sooner."

"Hmmm," Alice murmured. "Did I ever tell you that I once met Thomas and Martha Wayne?"

"What … You mean his parents?" Alex sat up, interested despite himself. "No, you didn't."

"It was on the train. They both used to ride the train all over town, you know."

"No, I didn't," Alex responded, mentally trying to picture the current Wayne with his thousand dollar suits and hundred thousand dollar sports cars on the graffitied and rackety city train.

"It was right at rush hour, and I barely even managed to squeeze in the car. Of course there wasn't any place to sit, especially not for a black woman. And then this white gentleman stood up and took off his hat, and said, 'Ma'am, may I offer you my seat?' I recognized him and I recognized his wife, too. They'd been in the papers an awful lot for all the philanthropic work they'd been doing. So I sat down and Mrs. Wayne smiled at me and said something about how the train was so crowded. Then we talked about the weather and the traffic until their stop."

"And?" Alex prompted.

"And nothing. I never saw them again, except in the papers. Well, don't be late tomorrow. I don't want the brisket to get cold." She hung up.

Alex resumed staring out the window. _And nothing, my foot_. He knew exactly what point his mother had been trying to make with her innocent little story. Thomas and Martha Wayne had been perfectly nice people until they'd been gunned down in front of their eight-year-old son. The same son for whom Alex had little sympathy and less respect.

His uncomfortable reverie was broken by his doorbell. Relieved at the distraction, Alex jumped for the intercom switch. "Yes?"

"Peaceable? It's Bruce Wayne. Can I come up?"

_He's come to fire me in person_. "Uh, yeah." Wondering why he suddenly felt so nervous, Alex the button that would let his visitor into the building. Two minutes later there was a knock on his apartment door. Alex swung it open and stepped back to let Wayne into the apartment. The billionaire sauntered in, hands stuffed in his coat pockets and his face expressionless.

"Would you like to sit down?" Alex offered hopefully.

"No." Hands still in his pockets, Wayne prowled across the room to the window, where he stood staring down into the street, much as Alex had earlier.

The silence grew oppressive. _Come on, man, just get it over with,_ Alex mentally pleaded, but his unexpected guest remained obstinately mute. Unable to bear the waiting any longer, Alex cleared his throat. "Look, Wayne, about yesterday …" He paused, but the other man declined to finish the sentence. "I'm sorry. I overstepped my bounds. I shouldn't have said what I did." _There, I did it._ Maybe now he could get some peace from his conscience.

"No, you shouldn't have." Wayne finally turned away from the window, his blank mask dropped to reveal yesterday's anger. "But as much as I'd like to fire you, I can't. You're the best tutor Dick's ever had, and frankly, I don't how I'd explain it if you just disappeared."

"You … you want me to come back?" Alex stammered, shocked.

"No, I don't want you to come back. But I don't have a choice. I don't like you, Peaceable, but I need you." As though physically unsettled by his bitter confession, Wayne began pacing the length of the room. Alex dropped onto the arm of the sofa and watched him. When the billionaire reached the far wall, he turned back and demanded, "Have I ever interfered with your teaching?"

"No," Alex admitted, then added, "Except when you pull Dick out for phony doctor's appointments."

Wayne nodded slowly. "If I promise not to do that anymore, will you promise to stop goading me into it?"

Alex couldn't stop the shock that took control of his face, as he realized that Wayne had understood all of the snide jabs made at his expense, insults he never would have understood had he truly been as shallow as he appeared. Before he could get past the surprise to thinking up a response, Wayne strode forward until he was a threatening mere inches from Alex.

"_If_ you come back, Peaceable, there is one thing we're going to be absolutely clear on. Richard Grayson is my son in everything but DNA, and you _will_ respect my authority."

"I understand."

"Good." Wayne stepped back, allowing Alex some breathing room. "So can Dick expect you on Monday?"

Alex drew himself up to his full height and met Wayne's challenging gaze fearlessly. "Yes."

The other man nodded curtly and strode toward the door. When it was shut securely behind him, Alex half collapsed onto the sofa and let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. _What just happened?_

Apparently, he still had a job. That was good. He would have missed Dick and worried about him in the hands of a less competent mathematician. But on the other hand, every assumption he had made about his employer had just been seriously shaken. The Bruce Wayne who had just left had been as earnest a man as Alex had ever met in his life. And yet, the fact remained that the billionaire spent a majority of his time acting like a jackass. _Thomas and Martha Wayne, two perfectly nice people until they were gunned down in front of their son. Then maybe … maybe … acting like a jackass is just another way to outrun the past._

* * *

Trevor jerked his geometry book out of a stack in his locker and slammed the metal door shut. Ready to sprint for his next class, he nearly ran headlong into Barbara Gordon, who was standing just behind him. "Sorry," he apologized automatically, his brain busy processing her pale face and the dark circles beneath her eyes.

"Starbucks after school?" she asked.

"Sure," he agreed, trying not to sound too eager.

"Ok." She walked away, and Trevor had to grit his teeth to keep the ecstatic grin off his face. It had been hard to stay patient over the long weeks since he had first made his proposal, but at last the waiting had paid off. He already knew what Barbara was going to say to him, but he looked forward to hearing it anyway.

When he got to the coffee shop, she was already waiting for him at a corner table, a steaming latte in front of her. Wanting to prolong the anticipation, Trevor got his own cup of coffee before joining her.

Barbara cut straight to the point. "I've thought it over, and I've decided that you're right. We could do something. We have to do something."

"We will," Trevor assured her. "Together, you and I will do a whole lot more than something. I can promise you that."

Her mouth curved contemptuously. "You don't have to promise me anything. Truthfully, Trevor, I don't need you. But I do need your resources, and you need mine."

Fine. If she wanted to play it cool, then he would reciprocate. Trevor raised one eyebrow in what he hoped was a disdainful manner. "Your resources?"

"Information. Don't tell me you didn't approach me because my father is the chief of police."

The ironic thing was, he hadn't. It was Barbara herself Trevor wanted, and her potential access to police knowledge was only a plus. But she wouldn't believe him if he tried to convince her and in the long run, her misconception might play to his advantage, Trevor reflected as he nodded and said, "All right. You have information. I have more material resources. It shouldn't be too hard to make a start."

Barbara leaned forward slightly, her expression a little fierce. "This isn't going to be about cheap thrills. We're going to do something that matters."

"I've never meant anything else," Trevor answered impatiently.

She remained unyielding. "And don't think I'm agreeing to become your flunky."

"Of course not. We're partners." He offered his hand across the table.

Barbara gave him a long, searching look. Trevor refused to look away and kept his hand steady. At last she reached out and grasped it. "Partners."

* * *

Selina Kyle sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair, watching intently through a one-way glass partition. An intercom allowed her to hear everything that was said by the two men behind the glass.

"And then what did you see?" one of them asked softly. He was of medium height and slender build, with wavy brown hair that cascaded over his pale forehead to brush the rim of his glasses.

His companion was shorter, heavier, and darker. He was also extremely agitated. Instead of answering the question, he demanded, "Where's Will? I want to see Will."

"First tell me what you saw," the other insisted.

"I told you. I already told you a hundred times. Where's Will? Let me see my brother, you dirty bastard, or I'll…" He rose threateningly from his chair, but his companion remained seated and unafraid.

"Louis, you can't see Will. And in the future, you will address me as doctor." Although he spoke in an even, quiet tone, Louis shrank back and melted into his chair.

"Why can't I see Will?" he whined piteously.

The doctor leaned forward and said deliberately, "Because Will is dead."

"No!" Louis screamed. "It's not true! You're lying, you're lying, you're…" He broke off mid shriek as his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell off his chair, jerking convulsively. The doctor watched impassively for the thirty seconds of the performance. Then Louis lay still, except for the ragged breaths that sounded as though they clawed their way out of his chest. "I saw you," he at last said faintly. "You hit him on the head. And then you tied him up with a rope and threw him in the river." With a final shuddering breath, he became motionless. The doctor rose and let himself out of the room.

"An entertaining performance," Selina greeted him as he entered the hallway. "And this has happened before?"

"Almost exactly. This is the third time I have broken the news of his brother's death to him. Each time, he fell into a convulsive fit, followed by an imagined vision of the death scene, and then unconsciousness. When he wakes, he has no memory of what has happened."

"Is the imagined vision always the same?"

"No, so far each has been unique except …" The doctor hesitated, glancing at the inert form in the glass room. "I am always the killer."

"Which you were not."

"No."

Selina, too, transferred her gaze to the comatose Louis. "It wasn't at all like the trance I saw him enter in Gotham. That was a very peaceful experience."

"I believe his subconscious is inducing these fits as coping mechanism. It is making it difficult to proceed with my analysis of his true visions."

"You think he is holding something back?"

"I am sure of it, and I will persevere until I know what it is."

Selina smiled up at him, a slow, sensuous expression that drew the doctor's eyes to her full mouth, even as he took an involuntary step backward. "I have perfect faith in you, doctor. Will you come and keep me company tonight?"

He took another step backward, his eyes flicking nervously from side to side. "I…"

"Of course you will." She reached up and slowly drew one long, manicured fingernail down his cheek. "Bring your mask."

* * *

A soft swish behind him announced the presence of the Bat, but Gordon stubbornly kept his back turned, arms folded tightly across his chest.

"You have news?" the rasping voice finally asked.

"Metropolis PD found Will Rice's body in an alley. Shot twice in the chest. There's no sign of his brother."

"Is that all?"

_All?_ Gordon wanted to scream. _No, that's not all!_ And suddenly, he couldn't hold it in any longer. "My wife is dead because of us." Holding his breath, he waited for a response but got only silence. At last he turned, expecting to find himself alone. He wasn't.

"I'm sorry," the Bat said.

"Why me?" Gordon asked. "Why did it have to be me?" The Bat stayed quiet, folding his arms across his armored chest. "Or for that matter," the cop continued more softly, "why you?"

"Does it matter?"

"It mattered when I was walking my children behind their mother's body. But maybe you're beyond such merely human problems."

The Bat shifted so that his cloak cascaded forward around his feet. "I was there."

Stunned, Gordon could only stare at Gotham's legend, who, for the first time in five years, had offered a glimpse of humanity. And then the Bat spoke again.

"I understand. I have a son."

Gordon felt that he was seeing his ally for the first time, not as a semi-divine avenger, but as a man. Somehow, that made him all the more remarkable. New understanding flashed between them.

"I'll keep you updated on the Rice brothers. We should have a copy of the autopsy tomorrow."

Batman bowed his head, and with a swirl of his cape, melted into the darkness.

_The End_

**A/N** YAY! For those of you who are interested (and those of you who are not), this story was 117 pages without author's notes. Not bad for just over five months.

Since this is the last chapter, please, PLEASE review! It doesn't have to be long or complicated or even signed – two anonymous words is fine. But as before, I'd like to get an idea of how many people actually read this story, since hit count is notoriously unreliable.

And for those of you (having been there myself, I KNOW who I'm talking to) who are right now thinking, "Wow, I'd really like to leave more than two anonymous words, but I just don't have the time right now. I'll come back later and write a really good review," please go ahead and leave the two words. Because (and as a review procrastinator I know what I'm talking about) 11 times out of 12, you don't come back, and two words is infinitely better than a long but imaginary review.

And now _dumdumdum_, the moment we've all been waiting for! (I mean that 'we' literally. I've been waiting to write this story since about the first chapter of _Dark Horizon_.)

Coming soon (hopefully a couple of weeks) to this site, the next installment of Philippa's staggeringly long _Batman Begins_ cycle:

**Night Falling**

_Richard goes undercover at an exclusive private school to track down a vicious killer, while Bruce finds himself increasingly entangled with the alluring Selina Kyle._

That's the short, official summary. In a longer, special feature sneak peek, it has been revealed that the story will be a mystery/action type tale (much like _Dark Horizon_, although hopefully better organized). There will be:

Lots of Dynamic Duo action

Catwoman's debut

Romantic complications for at least three heroes

(and my personal favorite) The return of everyone's favorite cranky social worker!

See you all in June!

By the way, I'm in the mood to write a little Bat fluff, but I'm not sure about what. Any ideas?


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